THE TERRIFORD MYSTERY
PROLOGUE
TERRIFORD village, a peaceful, exquisite corner of old England. Houses, cottages, and great raftered barns spread over a rising stretch of what was once primeval woodland. No dwelling place is less than fifty years old and many are of much older date.
At the apex of the broad, well-kept village street stands the pre-Reformation gray stone church. It rises from what appears to be a well-tended and fragrant garden, though here and there lichened stones and crosses show it to be what old-fashioned folk still call a graveyard.
But at the time my story opens sudden death, and all the evils the most normal death implies in our strange, transitory existence, seem very far from the inhabitants of Terriford. All the more remote because the group of people who are soon to be concerned with a mysterious and terrible drama of death are now one and all happy, cheerful, and full of life and excitement. For they are present as privileged spectators at the first appearance of the great Australian cricket team.
Why, it may well be asked, should quiet Terriford village be so honoured? It is because Harry Garlett, the man who stands to the hamlet in the relation of squire, is the most popular amateur cricketer in the county and the owner of the best private cricket ground in England. Not only money, but a wealth of loving care combined with great technical knowledge and experience, has brought it near to absolute perfection—this fine expanse of English turf, framed in a garland of noble English elms and spreading chestnut trees.
Months ago in the dreary winter, when the tour of the Australian test match team was being arranged, Garlett had invited the visitors to come to Terriford immediately on landing from the boat and “play themselves in” after the long voyage. He undertook to collect a strong team of amateurs, stiffened with two or three professionals, that the Australians might have something worth tackling, and he did not fail to point out that at Terriford the visitors would most quickly become accustomed to English pitches and the soft English light, so different from the hard dry sunshine and matting wickets of Australia.
Harry Garlett knew that the merits of his private ground were well known over there, on the other side of the world, but all the same he could not feel sure. And so it was one of the happiest moments of a life which had been singularly happy and fortunate when he received the cable informing him that the Australian team would accept with pleasure his kind invitation.
To-day, on this bright spring morning, the closing day of the great match, there could be no more characteristically English scene than this mixture of country-house party, garden party, and enthusiasts for the national game.
The cricket is serious, but not so serious as to risk interfering with good fellowship, the more so that this match does not count in the tour for records and averages. The spirit of the whole affair is one of pure good sportsmanship, and the small group of newspaper experts whom Garlett has invited are all eager to see how the visitors shape and how they compare with the great Australian teams of the past.
These connoisseurs are also full of admiration for the eleven which their host has collected. It is indeed a cleverly composed combination. Youth is represented by some brilliant young players from Oxford and Cambridge, cheerful fellows who are equally likely to hit up centuries or to make the two noughts familiarly known as “a pair of spectacles.” But these lads are as active as monkeys in the field and can save seemingly certain runs and bring off seemingly impossible “catches.”
Then there is a sprinkling of somewhat older, but still young men, who have proved their mettle in the great county teams. Last, but not least, there are three professionals—men whose names are known wherever cricket is played and who are past-masters in all the subtleties of the great game.
Decidedly the Cornstalks, though the odds are slightly in their favour, will have to play all out if they are to win.
Any one who envied Harry Garlett his manifold good fortune, his popularity, his good looks, his ideal life in “Easy Street,” for he is a prosperous manufacturer as well as a famous cricketer, might argue that were it not for the long voyage from Australia the Garlett eleven would be beaten to a frazzle. But the general feeling is that it is just that handicap on the visitors which equalizes the chances and makes the match one of real sporting interest.
The pavilion is situated at the top of the cricket field and commands a splendid view of the game. But the game is not the only thing. Indeed, there are people there to whom it is not only an excuse to meet, to gossip, and to enjoy a generous host's delightful hospitality. For, at the back of the great room where Harry Garlett's special guests are all gathered together, is a buffet loaded with every kind of delicious food, wine, and spirits. Garlett, though himself abstemious as every keen athlete has need to be, always offers the best of cheer to his friends, ay, and not only to his friends, for bounteous free refreshments are also provided for the village folk as well as for certain cricket enthusiasts from the county town of Grendon.
And now let us concentrate on a little group of people in the pavilion, all obviously quite at ease with one another, and all bent on making the most of a memorable occasion. Very ordinary folk they are, typical inhabitants of almost any English village.
First, in order of precedence—the rector and his wife, Mr. and Mrs. Cole-Wright, he kindly and far from clever, facts which make him popular, his wife clever and not over kindly, and therefore far less popular.
Then come Dr. and Mrs. Maclean. The wise physician, whose fame goes far beyond the confines of his practice, has snatched a day off from his busy life in order to be present at the closing scenes of the great match. Both he and his wife are Scotch, but they have lived for fifteen years very happily in this typical English village. They are a closely united couple, and the one lack in their joint life has lately been satisfied by their adoption of Mrs. Maclean's niece, Jean Bower, an attractive, cheerful-looking, happy girl whose first introduction to the neighbourhood is taking place to-day in Harry Garlett's cricket pavilion. Jean is only twenty-one, but she is not an idle girl. It is known that she did good work during the last part of the war, and she has lately been made secretary to the Etna China Company of which Harry Garlett is managing director.
As to the other people there, they include Colonel Brackbury, the Governor of Grendon Prison, his sharp-featured wife and two pretty daughters; Mr. Toogood, chief lawyer in Grendon, with his wife and daughter; Dr. Tasker, one of the few bachelors in the neighbourhood; and, last but not least in that little group who are all on intimate terms with one another, and whose affairs are constantly discussed in secret by their humble neighbours, is Mary Prince, true type of that peculiarly English genus unkindly called “old maid.”
Miss Prince is at once narrow-minded and tolerant, mean and generous, wickedly malicious, while yet, in a sense, exceedingly kind-hearted. Perhaps because her father was Dr. Maclean's predecessor the village folk consult her concerning their ailments, grave and trifling, more often than they do the doctor himself.
There is one dark spot in the life of Harry Garlett. His devoted wife, to whom as an actual fact the whole of Terriford village belongs—or did belong till she made it over to him—is an invalid. Many months have gone by since she left the upper floor of the delightful Georgian manor house, which owes its unsuitable name of the Thatched House to the fact that it was built on the site of a medieval thatched building.
The Thatched House is a childless house, and Harry Garlett, though on the best of terms with his invalid wife, is constantly away, at any rate during the summer months, playing cricket here, there, and everywhere, all over England. So Agatha Cheale, Mrs. Garlett's housekeeper, who is known to be a kinswoman of her employer, plays the part of hostess in the cricket pavilion. Even so, as the day wears on Miss Cheale disappears unobtrusively two or three times in order to see if Mrs. Garlett is comfortable and also to give her news of the cricket match and especially news of how Mr. Garlett is acquitting himself. Everything that concerns her husband is of deep moment to Mrs. Garlett, and she is exceedingly proud of his fame as a cricketer.
On this, the second day of the great match, the Australians have been set to make 234 runs in their second innings for victory. When the teams go in for lunch there are few, even among those to whom the finer shades of the game are as a sealed book, who doubt that they will do it pretty easily.
The pitch has worn wonderfully well, and Garlett feels a thrill of delight when he sees it roll out as true and plumb as on the first day. He thinks with intense satisfaction of all the patient care that he has devoted to this ground, of all the cunning devices of drainage lying hid beneath the level turf, and of the scientific treatment with which he has nursed the turf up to this acme of condition. Ah, money can do much, but money alone couldn't have done that. He wants to win the match, but he emphatically does not want to owe victory to any defect of the pitch.
In such happy mood does Garlett lead his team out into the field after lunch, and the Australians start, full of confidence. But somehow, even from the beginning, they seem to find runs hard to get, harder than in their first knock.
The young undergraduates field like men inspired, covering an immense lot of ground and turning what seem certain fours into singles. Wickets fall, too. Some of the Australians open their Herculean shoulders too soon, and, beginning to hit before they are properly “set,” misjudge the ball and get caught from terrific “skiers.” But still the score creeps up. With careful generalship Garlett frequently changes his bowling, treating the batsmen to every variety of swerve and break that his bowlers can command.
The tension grows. One of Garlett's professionals, a chartered jester of the Surrey team, forgets to play off the antics with which he is wont to amuse the crowd at the famous Oval ground, and suddenly becomes quite serious. Still the score mounts up. On the great staging beside the scorer's box large tin numbers painted in white on a black ground show the progress of the game.
Now, the last Australian is going in. What is the score? Ah, see, the man is just changing the plates—yes, there it is! Nine wickets down for 230 runs. Only four more to make and the match is won—and lost!
What is the matter? Why is Mr. Garlett talking to the bowler? A little plan of campaign, no doubt. Every heart on the ground beats a little faster, even surely those well-schooled hearts concealed beneath the white flannels which stand out so brilliantly on the deep green of the pitch.
The newcomer takes his block. He is a huge creature with thick, jet-black beard, a good man at rounding up the most difficult steers on the far South Australian plains.
“Play!” Swift flies the ball from the height of the bowler's swing, and our cattle tamer, playing forward, drives it with a mighty swipe. “Oh, well hit, sir!” Is it a boundary? If so, the match is won. No, no, one of Garlett's agile undergraduates has arrived like a white flash at the right spot and at the right moment. Like lightning he gathers the ball and returns it to the wicket. Ah, a run out? No, yes, no—Black Beard has just got home. It was a narrow shave, but two precious runs have been added.
Only two more to make! Everyone is silent in the tense excitement. Again the ball flies from the bowler's hand, and this time the Australian giant decides to go all out for a winning hit. He opens his brawny chest, all rippling with knotted muscles, and, taking the ball fair in the middle of the bat, lifts it in a huge and lofty curve which seems certain to come to earth beyond the boundary of the pitch.
But wait! Garlett is there, at extra long-on. It is the catch he has planned with the bowler. It is all over in a moment, and yet what a long moment it seems to the entranced spectators!
That little round leather ball high up against the evening sky reaches the top of its flight. Ah, it is over the pavilion! No, it is impossible! But Garlett does it, all the same. With a mighty backward leap he gets the ball into his safe hands just as it was dropping on to the seats in front of the pavilion.
Out! Our cattle-tamer is out, the last Australian wicket, and the match is won—by one run!
Every one feels the curious tingling thrill that comes of having seen a feat that will become historic. Garlett's great catch that won the Australian match for his eleven will be talked about and written about for years to come, wherever cricket is had in honour.
Garlett has picked himself up from where he fell after his terrific leap—but still, you may be sure, holding the precious ball safely to his chest—and instantly he is the centre of a throng of cheering and congratulatory friends, among whom the Cornstalks themselves are foremost.