The Ashiel mystery: A Detective Story by Mrs. Charles Bryce (read out loud books TXT) 📖

his uncle's life. Knowing him, as I have done, from a child, I may say I shouldn't hardly have thought it of him, sir."

"Life is full of surprises," said Gimblet, "and you never know for certain what anyone may not do; but, tell me, you were the first on the scene of the crime, weren't you?"

"Hardly that, sir. Miss Byrne was with his lordship at the time."

"Yes, yes, of course. But you saw him shortly after the shot was fired.
Did you hear the report?"

"No, sir. The hall is quite away from the tower, and so is the housekeeper's room; and the walls are very thick. We were just finishing supper, which was very late that night on account of the gentlemen coming in late from stalking, and one thing and another. I'm rather surprised none of us heard it, sir."

"I daresay there was a good deal of noise going on," said Gimblet. "How many of you are there in the servants' quarters?"

"Counting the chauffeur and the hall boy," replied Blanston, "and including the visitors' maids, who are gone now, we were sixteen servants in the house that night. I am afraid there may have been rather a noise going on."

"Were you all there?" asked Gimblet. "Had no one left since the beginning of supper?"

"No one had gone out of the room or the hall since supper commenced," Blanston assured him. "We were all very glad of that afterwards, as it prevented any of us being suspected, sir. Though in point of fact I was saying only last night, when the second footman dropped the pudding just as he was bringing it into the room, that we could really have spared him better than what we could Sir David, sir; but of course it's natural for the household to be feeling a bit jumpy till after the funeral to-morrow. When that's over I shan't listen to no more excuses."

"Quite so," said Gimblet. "What was the first intimation you got that there was anything wrong?"

"About half-past ten the billiard-room bell rang very loud, in the passage outside the hall. Before it had stopped, and while I was calling to George, the first footman, to hurry up and answer it, there came another peal, and then another and another. I thought something must be wrong, so I ran out of the room and upstairs with the others. When we got to the billiard-room there was Miss Byrne fainting on a chair, and Mr. McConachan beside her, looking very upset like. 'There's been an accident or worse,' he says, 'to his lordship. Come on, Blanston, and let's see what it is. And you others look after Miss Byrne. Fetch her maid; fetch Lady Ruth.'

"And with that he makes for the library door, at a run, with me following him close, though I was a bit puffed with coming upstairs so fast. Just as we came to the library door, he turns and says to me, with his hand on the knob, 'From what Miss Byrne says, Blanston, I'm afraid it's murder.' And before I could more than gasp he had the door open, and we were in the room.

"There was his poor lordship lying forward on the table, his head on the blotting-book, and one arm hanging down beside him. Quite dead, he was, sir, and his blood all on the floor, poor gentleman. We left him as we found him, and went back.

"Mr. McConachan locked the door and put the key in his pocket. 'No one must go in there till the police come,' he says. 'But in the meantime we must get what men we can together, and see if the brute who did this isn't lurking about the grounds. It will be something if we can catch him, and avenge my poor uncle,' he said."

Gimblet considered for a moment.

"Are you sure you remember the position you found the body in?" he asked.

"Yes, sir," replied Blanston, in some surprise. "It was like I told you. His head on the blotting-book and one arm with it. He must have fallen straight forward on to the table."

"Thank you," said Gimblet. "One more question. I hear you witnessed a will for Lord Ashiel a day or two before he died?"

"Yes, sir—I and Mrs. Parsons, the housekeeper."

"How did you know it was the will?"

"We didn't exactly know it was, sir, but afterwards, when it came out his lordship had told Miss Byrne he had made one, we thought it must have been that."

"I see," said Gimblet. "Thank you. That is all I wanted to know."

He sent for the other servants and interrogated them one by one, but without adding anything fresh to what he had already learned.

He went thoughtfully away and sought out Mark in the smoking-room, where he found him surrounded by packets of papers, which lay in heaps upon the floor and tables.

"There's a frightful lot to look through," said the young man despondently, looking up from his self-imposed task. "I haven't found anything interesting yet. How did you get on? Do you think those footmarks can possibly be anyone's but David's?"

"The boot you gave me fits them too well to admit of doubt, I'm afraid," said Gimblet. And as the other made a half-gesture of despair, "You must give me more time," he said; "I may find some clue in the course of the next two or three days. By the by, is your cousin a short man?"

"No," said Mark, "he's about my height. Why do you ask?"

"Oh, I had an idea," said Gimblet evasively. "But if he's as tall as you, I had better begin again. I think I'll take a little stroll through the grounds," he added, "and then back to Lady Ruth Worsfold's house, and get a bath and a change."

"I shall see you at dinner-time," said Ashiel. "I am dining at the cottage. Au revoir till then."

Gimblet went out of the front door, and proceeded to make a tour of the
Castle buildings.

Turning to his left round the front of the house, he passed the gun-room door, and went down a short path, which led to the level of the servants' quarters. These were built on the slope of the hill, so that what was a basement in the front of the house was level with the ground at the back.

Here more remains of the old fortress were to be seen. The various outbuildings that straggled down towards the loch had all once formed part of old block-houses or outlying towers; and, as the path descended farther down the hill, the detective found himself walking round the precipitous rock from which the single great tower still standing—the one in whose massive shell the room had been cut which was now the library—dominated the scene from every side.

It had been built at the very edge of the hill which here fell almost sheer to the level of the lake, and the old McConachans had no doubt chosen their site for its unscalable position. Indeed, the place must always have been impregnable from that side, the rock offering no foothold to a goat till within twenty feet of the base of the tower, where the surface was broken and uneven, and had, in places, been built up with solid masonry. In the crevices up there, seeds had germinated and grown to tall plants and bushes. Ivy hung about the face of the escarpment like a scarf, and in one place a good-sized tree, a beech, had established itself firmly upon a ledge and leant forward over the path below in a manner that turned the beholder giddy. Its great roots had not been able to grow to their full girth within the cracks and crannies of the rocks; some of them had pushed their way in through the gaps in the masonry, and the others curled and twisted in mid air, twining and interlacing in an outspread canopy.

Beyond the tower ran the battlemented wall of the enclosed garden, its foundations draped in the thrifty vegetation of the rocks.

At Gimblet's feet, on the other side of the path, brawled a burn, hurrying on its way to the loch, and he followed its course slowly down to the place where it mingled with the deep waters. A little beyond he saw the point of a fir-covered peninsula, and wandered on under the trees till he came to the end of it; there he sat down to think over what he had heard and seen that afternoon. The wild beauty of the place soothed and delighted him, and he felt lazily in his pocket for a chocolate.

Below him, grey lichen-grown rocks jutted into the loch in tumbled, broken masses, piled heedlessly one on the other, as if some troll of the mountain had begun in play to make a causeway for himself. The great stones, so old, so fiercely strong, stood knee-deep in the waters, over which they seemed to brood with so patient and indifferent a dignity that human life and affairs took on an aspect very small and inconsiderable. They were like monstrous philosophers, he thought, oblivious alike to time and to the cold waves that lapped their feet; their heads crowned here and there with pines as with scattered locks, the little tufts of heather and fern and grasses, that clung to them wherever root hold could be found, all the clothing they wore against the bitter blasts of the winds.

While he sat there a breeze got up and ruffled the loch; the ripples danced and sparkled like a cinematograph, and waves threw themselves among the rocks with loud gurglings and splashings. The air was suddenly full of the noise and hurry of the waters. He got up and went to the end of the peninsula. In spite of the dancing light upon the surface and the merry sounds of the ripples, the water, he could see, was deep and dark; a little way out a pale smooth stone rose a few feet above the level of it, its top draped in a velvet green shawl of moss. A fat sea-gull sat there; nor did it move when he appeared.

A little bay ran in between the rocks, its shore spread with grey sand, smooth and trackless. At least so Gimblet imagined it at first, as his eye roved casually over the beach. Then suddenly, with a smothered ejaculation, he leaped down from his perch of observation, and made his way to the margin of the water.

There, scored in the sand, was a deep furrow, reaching to within a foot of the waves, where it stopped as if it had been wiped out from a slate with a damp sponge. Gimblet had no doubt what it was. A boat had been beached here, and that lately. A glance at the stones surrounding the bay showed him that the water was falling, for in quiet little pools, within the outer breakwater of rocks, a damp line showed on the granite a full quarter of an inch above the water. By a rapid calculation of the time it would take for that watermark to dry, the detective was able to form some idea of the rate at which the loch was falling, and he thought he could judge the slope of the beach sufficiently well to calculate about how long it was since the track in the sand had reached to the brink of the waves.

It was a rough guess, but, if he were right, then a boat had landed in that bay some forty-two hours ago. But there were other traces, besides, the tracks of him who had brought the boat ashore. From where Gimblet stood, a double row of footprints, going and returning, showed plainly between the water and the stones to which the sand quickly gave place. They were the tracks left by large boots with singularly pointed toes, and with no nails on the soles. Emphatically not boots such as any of the men of those parts would be likely to wear.

Gimblet bent over the sand.

When he rose once more and stood erect upon the beach, he saw under the shadow of the pines the figure of a tall thin man with a lean face and straggling reddish moustache, who was watching him with an eye plainly suspicious. He was dressed in knickerbockers and coat of rough tweed of a large checked pattern, and carried a spy-glass slung over his back. The detective went to him at once.

"Are you employed on the Inverashiel estate?" he asked civilly.

"I'm Duncan McGregor, his lordship's head keeper," was the