Fletcher In The Mayor's Parlour

1. Auflage 2017
ISBN: 978-83-8136-024-1
Verlag: Ktoczyta.pl
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 238 Seiten

This is a story of graft and corruption set in one of Fletchers favoured Northern towns. The mayor who is on a clean-up campaign is found dead in his parlour and our hero, his younger cousin, is determined to find out who killed him. Was he eliminated for this reason? There are entanglements involving city officials and his proposed reforms plus jealousy related to relationships. Lots of twists with a surprise murderer. The plot is cleverly centered around the inquest, which keeps being adjourned in hope of new evidence.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Fletcher, Joseph Smith

Leseproben

CHAPTER II THE CAMBRIC HANDKERCHIEF Bunning knew the Mayor was dead before that cry of surprise had passed his lips. In his time he had seen many dead men–sometimes it was a bullet, sometimes a bayonet; he knew the signs of what follows on the swift passage of one and the sharp thrust of the other. In his first glance into the room he had been quick to notice the limp hand hanging across the edge of the desk, the way in which Wallingford’s head lay athwart the mass of papers over which he had collapsed in falling forward from his chair–that meant death. And the old soldier’s observant eye had seen more than that–over the litter of documents which lay around the still figure were great crimson stains. The caretaker’s cry changed to articulated speech. “Murder! The Mayor’s been murdered!” Brent, a strongly-built and active man, pushed by, and made for the desk. He was going to lay a hand on his cousin’s shoulder, but Bunning stopped him. “For God’s sake, Mr. Brent, don’t touch him!” he exclaimed. “Let him be, sir, till the police––“ He paused, staring round the gloomy, oak-panelled room from the walls of which the portraits of various dignitaries looked down. “Who on earth can have done it?” he muttered. “It’s–it’s not three-quarters of an hour since he came up here!” “Alone?” asked Brent. “Alone, sir! And I’ll take my solemn oath that nobody was here, waiting for him. I’d been in this room myself, not five minutes before he came,” said Dunning. “It was empty of course.” Brent disregarded the caretaker’s admonition and laid a finger on the dead man’s forehead. But Bunning pointed to a dark stain, still spreading, on the back of the Mayor’s coat–a well-worn garment of grey tweed. “Look there, sir,” he whispered. “He’s been run through the body from behind–right through the heart!–as he sat in his chair. Murder!” “Who should murder him?” demanded Brent. Bunning made no answer. He was looking round. There were three doors into that room; he glanced at each, shaking his head after each glance. “We’d best get the police, at once, Mr. Brent,” he said. “The police station’s just at the back–there’s a way down to it from outside this parlour. I’ll run down now. You, sir––” “I’ll stop here,” answered Brent. “But get a doctor, will you? I want to know––” “Dr. Wellesley, the police-surgeon, is next door,” replied Brent. “The police’ll get him. But he’s beyond all doctors, Mr. Brent! Instantaneous–that! I know!” He hurried out of the room, and Brent, left alone with the dead man, looked at him once again wonderingly. Cousins though they were, he and Wallingford knew little of each other: their acquaintance, such as it was, had not been deep enough to establish any particular affection between them. But since Wallingford’s election as Mayor of Hathelsborough Brent, by profession a journalist in London, had twice spent a week-end with him in the old town, and had learnt something of his plans for a reform of certain matters connected with the administration of its affairs. They had discussed these things on the occasion of his last visit, and now, as he stood by the dead man, Brent remembered certain words which Wallingford had spoken. “There are things that I can do,” Wallingford had said, with some confidence. And then he had added, with a cynical laugh, “But there are other things that–why, it would be, literally, as much as my life’s worth to even try to undermine them!” That was now four months since, but Brent remembered. And as he stood there, waiting for help which would be useless, he began to wonder if Wallingford, eager for reform, had attempted anything likely to bring him into personal danger. Certainly, from all that Brent knew of him, he was the sort of man who, having set himself to a task, would let nothing stop him in accomplishing it; he was the sort of man too, Brent thought, who had a genius for making enemies: such men always have. But murder? Cold-blooded, deliberate, apparently well-planned murder! Yet there it was, before him. The Mayor of Hathelsborough had walked up into that room, sacred to his official uses and suggestive in its atmosphere and furniture of his great dignity, and had settled down to his desk, only to be assassinated by some enemy who had taken good care to perform his crime with swiftness and thoroughness. The sound of heavy footsteps on the stairs outside the half-open door aroused Brent from these melancholy speculations; he turned to see Bunning coming back, attended by several men, and foremost among them, Hawthwaite, superintendent of the borough police, whom Brent had met once or twice on his previous visits to the town. Hawthwaite, a big, bearded man, was obviously upset, if not actually frightened; his ruddy face had paled under the caretaker’s startling news, and he drew his breath sharply as he entered the Mayor’s Parlour and caught sight of the still figure lying across the big desk in the–middle. “God bless my life and soul, Mr. Brent!” he exclaimed in hushed tones as he tiptoed nearer to the dead and the living. “What’s all this? You found the Mayor dead–you and Bunning? Why–why––” “We found him as you see him,” answered Brent. “He’s been murdered! There’s no doubt about this, superintendent.” Hawthwaite bent down fearfully towards the dead man, and then looked round at Bunning. “When did he come up here?” he asked sharply. “About three-quarters of an hour before Mr. Brent came, sir,” replied Bunning. “He came up to me as I was standing outside the gates, smoking my pipe, and said that he was going up to the Mayor’s Parlour, and nobody was to be allowed to disturb him, but that if his cousin, Mr. Brent, came, he was to be shown up. Mr. Brent came and I brought him up, and we found his Worship as you see.” “Somebody’s been lying in wait for him,” muttered Hawthwaite. “Hid in this room!” “Nobody here five minutes before he came up, sir,” affirmed Bunning. “I was up here myself. There was nobody in here, and nobody in this part of the building.” Hawthwaite looked round the room, and Brent looked with him. It was a big room, panelled in old oak to half the height of its walls; above the panelling hung numerous portraits of past occupants of the Mayoral chair and some old engravings of scenes in the town. A wide, old-fashioned fire-place stood to the right of the massive desk; on either side of it were recesses, in each of which there was a door. Hawthwaite stepped across to these in turn and tried them; each was locked from the inside; he silently pointed to the keys. “The door to the stairs was open, sir,” remarked Bunning. “I mean his Worship hadn’t locked himself in, as I have known him do.” Hawthwaite nodded. Then he nudged Brent’s elbow, looking sideways at the dead man. “Been done as he sat writing in his chair,” he muttered. “Look–the pen’s fallen from his fingers as he fell forward. Queer!” A policeman came hurrying into the room, pulling himself up as he saw what was there. His voice instinctively hushed. “Dr. Wellesley’s just gone down Meadow Gate, sir,” he announced. “They’ve sent for him to come here at once.” “Unless!” murmured the superintendent. “Still––” Then the five or six men present stood, silently waiting. Some stared about the room, as if wondering at its secret: some occasionally took covert glances at its central figure. One of the three high, narrow windows was open: Brent distinctly heard the murmur of children playing in the streets outside. And suddenly, from the tower of St. Hathelswide, at the other end of the market-place, curfew began to ring. “He’s coming, sir!” whispered the policeman who stood near the door. “On the stairs, sir.” Brent turned as Dr. Wellesley came hurrying into the room; a tall, clean-shaven, fresh-coloured man, who went straight to the desk, looked at what he found there, and turned quickly on the men grouped around. “How long is it since he was found?” he asked abruptly. “Ten or twelve minutes,” answered Brent. “Dead then?” “Yes,” said Brent. “I should say–of course, I don’t speak professionally–but I should think he’d been dead at least half an hour.” The doctor glanced at the superintendent. “We must have him taken down to the mortuary,” he said. “Let some of you men stay here with me, and send another for my assistant and for Dr. Barber.” The superintendent gave some orders, and touching Brent’s arm motioned him to follow outside the room. “This is a bad business, Mr. Brent!” he said as they paused at the head of the stair. “That’s murder, sir! But how on earth did the murderer get in there? Bunning tells me that he himself was standing outside the iron gates at the entrance to the Moot Hall from the time the Mayor entered until you came. He asserts that nobody entered the place by those gates.” “I suppose there are other means of entrance?” suggested Brent. “Doubtful if anybody could get in by them at this hour of the evening,” answered the superintendent. “But there are two ways by which anybody could get to the Mayor’s Parlour. They’re both what you might call complicated. I’ll show you them. Come this way.” He led Brent across a corridor that branched off from the head of the stone staircase, and presently stopped at a big double door. “This is the Council Chamber,” he said, as they entered a spacious apartment. “You see that door in...