The Middle Temple Murder - J. S. Fletcher (reading women .TXT) 📗

then a good deal of his, Spargo’s, latest theory, would be dissolved to nothingness. But if that coffin contained no body at all, then⁠—

“They’re down to it!” whispered Breton.

Presently they all went and looked down into the grave. The workmen had uncovered the coffin preparatory to lifting it to the surface; one of them was brushing the earth away from the nameplate. And in the now strong light they could all read the lettering on it.

James Cartwright Chamberlayne
Born 1852
Died 1891

Spargo turned away as the men began to lift the coffin out of the grave.

“We shall know now!” he whispered to Breton. “And yet⁠—what is it we shall know if⁠—”

“If what?” said Breton. “If⁠—what?”

But Spargo shook his head. This was one of the great moments he had lately been working for, and the issues were tremendous.

“Now for it!” said the Watchman’s solicitor in an undertone. “Come, Mr. Spargo, now we shall see.”

They all gathered round the coffin, set on low trestles at the graveside, as the workmen silently went to work on the screws. The screws were rusted in their sockets; they grated as the men slowly worked them out. It seemed to Spargo that each man grew slower and slower in his movements; he felt that he himself was getting fidgety. Then he heard a voice of authority.

“Lift the lid off!”

A man at the head of the coffin, a man at the foot suddenly and swiftly raised the lid: the men gathered round craned their necks with a quick movement.

Sawdust!

The coffin was packed to the brim with sawdust, tightly pressed down. The surface lay smooth, undisturbed, levelled as some hand had levelled it long years before. They were not in the presence of death, but of deceit.

Somebody laughed faintly. The sound of the laughter broke the spell. The chief official present looked round him with a smile.

“It is evident that there were good grounds for suspicion,” he remarked. “Here is no dead body, gentlemen. See if anything lies beneath the sawdust,” he added, turning to the workmen. “Turn it out!”

The workmen began to scoop out the sawdust with their hands; one of them, evidently desirous of making sure that no body was in the coffin, thrust down his fingers at various places along its length. He, too, laughed.

“The coffin’s weighted with lead!” he remarked. “See!”

And tearing the sawdust aside, he showed those around him that at three intervals bars of lead had been tightly wedged into the coffin where the head, the middle, and the feet of a corpse would have rested.

“Done it cleverly,” he remarked, looking round. “You see how these weights have been adjusted. When a body’s laid out in a coffin, you know, all the weight’s in the end where the head and trunk rest. Here you see the heaviest bar of lead is in the middle; the lightest at the feet. Clever!”

“Clear out all the sawdust,” said someone. “Let’s see if there’s anything else.”

There was something else. At the bottom of the coffin two bundles of papers, tied up with pink tape. The legal gentlemen present immediately manifested great interest in these. So did Spargo, who, pulling Breton along with him, forced his way to where the officials from the Home Office and the solicitor sent by the Watchman were hastily examining their discoveries.

The first bundle of papers opened evidently related to transactions at Market Milcaster: Spargo caught glimpses of names that were familiar to him, Mr. Quarterpage’s amongst them. He was not at all astonished to see these things. But he was something more than astonished when, on the second parcel being opened, a quantity of papers relating to Cloudhampton and the Hearth and Home Mutual Benefit Society were revealed. He gave a hasty glance at these and drew Breton aside.

“It strikes me we’ve found a good deal more than we ever bargained for!” he exclaimed. “Didn’t Aylmore say that the real culprit at Cloudhampton was another man⁠—his clerk or something of that sort?”

“He did,” agreed Breton. “He insists on it.”

“Then this fellow Chamberlayne must have been the man,” said Spargo. “He came to Market Milcaster from the north. What’ll be done with those papers?” he asked, turning to the officials.

“We are going to seal them up at once, and take them to London,” replied the principal person in authority. “They will be quite safe, Mr. Spargo; have no fear. We don’t know what they may reveal.”

“You don’t, indeed!” said Spargo. “But I may as well tell you that I have a strong belief that they’ll reveal a good deal that nobody dreams of, so take the greatest care of them.”

Then, without waiting for further talk with anyone, Spargo hurried Breton out of the cemetery. At the gate, he seized him by the arm.

“Now, then, Breton!” he commanded. “Out with it!”

“With what?”

“You promised to tell me something⁠—a great deal, you said⁠—if we found that coffin empty. It is empty. Come on⁠—quick!”

“All right. I believe I know where Elphick and Cardlestone can be found. That’s all.”

“All! It’s enough. Where, then, in heaven’s name?”

“Elphick has a queer little place where he and Cardlestone sometimes go fishing⁠—right away up in one of the wildest parts of the Yorkshire moors. I expect they’ve gone there. Nobody knows even their names there⁠—they could go and lie quiet there for⁠—ages.”

“Do you know the way to it?”

“I do⁠—I’ve been there.”

Spargo motioned him to hurry.

“Come on, then,” he said. “We’re going there by the very first train out of this. I know the train, too⁠—we’ve just time to snatch a mouthful of breakfast and to send a wire to the Watchman, and then we’ll be off. Yorkshire!⁠—Gad, Breton, that’s over three hundred miles away!”

XXXIII Forestalled

Travelling all that long summer day, first from the southwest of England to the Midlands, then from the Midlands to the north, Spargo and Breton came late at night to Hawes’ Junction, on the border of Yorkshire and Westmoreland, and saw rising all around them in the half-darkness the mighty bulks of the