The Kang-He Vase/Chapter 6

so utterly amazed to find out that our visitor was a full-fledged Scotland Yard detective, having until then cherished a wholly fanciful and imaginary idea of the personalities of these sleuth-hounds, that for a moment I stood staring at him, in blank silence. But Keziah called from the parlour, to know who was there, and I hurried back and thrust the card before her. She uttered an exclamation of annoyance, and stalked out into the hall.

“Now, I told Veller” she began. But at sight of the caller she checked herself. Keziah had certain weaknesses, and one of them, with which I was well enough acquainted, was for well-dressed and good-looking people. I saw her face change. “You don’t mean to say that you’re a policeman?” she exclaimed, incredulously. “A smart young gentleman like you!”

“I hope I’m not the less fitted for my job because of that, ma’am,” replied our visitor, with a laugh of enjoyment at Keziah’s bluntness. “I believe I’ve the pleasure of seeing Miss Heckitt—Miss Keziah Heckitt?”

“You can come in,” said Keziah, motioning him to enter. “Perhaps you’ll take a cup of tea?—it’s all ready. Of course, I saw you at the inquest, but I never dreamed that you’d anything to do with the police. And as I was just going to say, I told Veller yesterday morning all I know, and all that Ben there knows, and I said that I wouldn’t be bothered any more, nor with the newspaper men neither—especially them, a parcel of busy-bodies! But well I knew the police would come! However, sit you down—do you take milk and sugar?”

“Both, if you please, Miss Heckitt, and you’re very kind,” answered our visitor, taking the chair which I offered him. “But don’t think that I’m going to bother you! As a matter of fact, I’m here to save you a lot of bother. You see, the local police—Veller, of course—told me what you’d already said, and I suggested to them that instead of putting you in the witness-box this afternoon, it would be far better if I just called and had a bit of quiet talk with you. Ladies, I know, don’t care about going into witness-boxes.”

“Well, I don’t know that they’d have got anything much out of me if I had gone into the box,” remarked Keziah. “As to finding that poor fellow, Captain Marigold and Veller saw as much as Ben and me did, and as to anything else—try a bit of that hot tea-cake, now!”

“It’s the anything else, Miss Heckitt, that I called about,” said the detective, helping himself. “And the anything else is—your uncle, Mr. Joseph Krevin. As I understand matters, Mr. Krevin came down here, where he hadn’t been seen for a great many years, and said that he’d a little private business with somebody hereabouts. Since yesterday morning the local police have been making inquiries all round the immediate district, and they can’t find that Mr. Krevin called on anybody, saw anybody, did anything. Yet I believe he was twice away from your house during the day he spent here?”

“Out in the afternoon, and out again in the evening,” asserted Keziah. “But we don’t know where he went!”

“The notion is—or may be—that he came here to meet the dead man,” said Cherry. “I gather that you don’t know much about Mr. Krevin?—of late years.”

“I know nothing!” declared Keziah. “Never set eyes on him—never heard tell of him for nineteen years till the other day. I don’t know why he came here, mister, and I don’t know what he did here, and I don’t know where he went!”

“That’s a queer thing, too,” observed Cherry. “The local police spent a lot of time yesterday trying to find out where Mr. Krevin went when he left your house. They haven’t heard a word of him! From the time he walked out of your garden—five o’clock in the morning, I understand”

“I never said it was five o’clock,” interrupted Keziah. “What I said was that he’d gone by five o’clock, at which hour, following my usual custom, I was up. He might ha’ gone at three o’clock, or at two, or at one, for all I know. What I do know is, he’d gone! And good riddance!”

“You don’t feel friendly to your relative, Miss Heckitt?” suggested Cherry, smiling. “Just so! I understand. Well, he went during the night. But—before that, you’d told him of what had happened?—of what you and your brother had seen?”

“We had, and a nice turn it gave him!” replied Keziah. She proceeded to tell of Uncle Joseph’s seizure and of his denial of acquaintance with the murdered man. “But he may ha’ known him, for all that!” she concluded. “First and last, flesh and blood of ours though he is, Joe Krevin’s a bad ’un, mister! And I’ll warrant me he was down in these parts for no good purpose.”

“This is very excellent tea, ma’am,” said our visitor. “May I trouble you for another cup? Well, mysteries are mysteries, Miss Heckitt, and all we can do is to keep finding one bit of the puzzle and fitting it into another, and—so on! Haven’t found any bits of this, so far, though!” he added, with a grin. “Pretty well obscured, I think! Now, I hear that you all thought that you heard the sound of oars”

“We did!” said I, breaking in for the first time. “There’s no doubt about that! We heard them distinctly!”

“Close at hand?” he inquired, giving me a keen look.

Our tea-table was set in the wide window-place, from which there was a view of the whole expanse of the creek, and I turned, pointing out of the casements.

“You see the big black post set in the rocks down there, across the sands?” I said. “That’s Gallowstree Point, where we found the man tied up. Then you see the chimneys and gables of the big house set in the trees, to the eastward?—that’s Middlebourne Grange. And you see the promontory on this other, the west side, running out into the sea?—that’s Fliman’s End. Well, the boat that we heard was being pulled across there—it was between Gallowstree Point and Fliman’s End: I should say half-way across. And it was a single pair of oars, too!”

He listened to me with great attention, nodding his head at each point I made, and following my finger as I indicated the various directions. But he made no comment on this information, and presently finishing his tea, he thanked Keziah again for her hospitality, promised that she should be kept out of things as far as possible, and said he must be going. Then as he picked up his hat he turned to us as with an after-thought.

“I suppose you don’t know Mr. Joseph Krevin’s address?” he asked. “It might be useful.”

“No!” said Keziah, with emphasis. “We don’t know his address—if he has one! My opinion is that he goes about, like somebody we needn’t mention, seeking what he can devour! We’ve no idea where he can be heard of.”

But a sudden recollection came to me.

“Keziah!” I exclaimed. “Those cards!”

Keziah remembered, too. She glanced at the tea-caddy.

“Oh, well!” she said. “You can give him those, Ben. But what use they’ll be”

It seemed to me, when I had produced the cards and handed them over to Cherry, with an account of how and where I had found them, that they struck him as likely to be very useful. He put them in his pocket, said good-bye to Keziah, and went off. I walked down the garden with him, and when we were outside the porch he gave me a keen look.

“I’ve heard about you—from Veller,” he said. “You’re going in for the law, eh?”

“As soon as I’m all right again,” I answered.

“This affair interests you?” he suggested. “Just so!—now, what do you make of it?”

I was flattered at being asked such a question by a man who, young as he seemed, was, after all, a genuine detective. He saw that I was—and he laughed, and gave me an encouraging nod.

“You’re old enough to have an opinion!” he said. “Come, now?”

“Well, I think it’s a very queer thing that it should happen just when Uncle Joseph Krevin was here!” I replied, after a moment’s thought. “Besides, Uncle Joseph’s movements were strange.” I went on to tell him about the midnight visit, and the bag in the porch, and all the rest of it. “And where did he go when he went out—twice—that day he spent with us?” I concluded. “If we knew that”

“I’m going to know!” he interrupted. “I’ll tooth-comb this neighbourhood! He went—somewhere! He saw—somebody! All right!—we’ve got to find that out. No love lost, I think, between your sister and Uncle Joseph, eh?”

He laughed again, waved his hand and went off in the direction of Veller’s cottage. We neither saw nor heard anything of him during the rest of that day, nor on the following morning either, until, just after dinner, he came up the garden and approached the open window of the parlour, at which I was sitting.

“How are you to-day?” he asked, leaning over the window-sill. “I just looked round to say that I’m going a few miles along the coast on a bit of business—got a car waiting up the lane. Would you like to come?”

“Aye, take him, mister!” said Keziah, who was close behind me. “A ride’ll do him good. Put your overcoat on, now, Ben—it’s cold work in those motors. Got any news?” she inquired of Cherry as I made myself ready. “Anything come out?”

“Nothing much, ma’am,” replied the detective, smiling. “Slow and sure is the game! We live on hope, you know.”

“Poor stuff to live on, too, very often!” said Keziah. “I see there’s plenty about this affair in the newspapers this morning: them newspaper fellows is the boys to make a lot out of a little, to be sure! What beats me, considering all the fuss there’s been about this, is that that dead man’s friends don’t come forward to claim him! What?”

“They may have good reasons for keeping quiet, ma’am,” answered Cherry. “If there’s a bad egg in a sitting, the best thing is to throw it away, you know. Perhaps this man’s people aren’t over anxious to acknowledge any relationship. But I’ve no doubt somebody will be coming forward who knows something about him.”

I was ready then, and Cherry and I went off to a car which was waiting at the end of the lane. Once outside the garden gate he gave me a knowing look.

“I wasn’t going to say anything before your sister,” he said, “but I’ve heard of a bit of possible information, though I don’t know of what value it may be. Look at this—it was sent to the police-inspector this morning, and he handed it over to me.”

He gave me a sheet of coarse, cheap letter-paper on which a few lines were scrawled in watery ink by some hand which, obviously, was not at all accustomed to the frequent use of a pen.

“I’ve an idea that the something to which Sarah Tappen refers has to do with your uncle,” said Cherry as I gave him back the letter. “That’s why I asked you to go with me—if we hear any description of such a man, you can tell if it fits him. Now where is this Fishampton?”

“Six or seven miles away, on the Kingshaven road,” said I. “It’s a queer little place, at the head of a creek. Tell the driver to go straight to the Crab and Lobster—he’ll know it. And that’s a queer place, too!”

Everybody knew the Crab and Lobster in our part of the country. It was one of the oldest houses in the neighbourhood: a ramshackle place, one side of which rose sheer out of the waters of Fishampton Creek, while the other fronted the high road from London to Kingshaven. It was a place to which people walked out from Kingshaven in summer, to go boating and fishing on the creek, or to have tea in the garden; a place, too, convenient for drovers and carters, and sure, at all times, of a good trade—not the house, it seemed to me, where secret meetings could be held, and I had the idea that if Uncle Joseph Krevin had been there there would be something secret about his visit. But Cherry and I had not been closeted with Mrs. Tappen, a little, sharp-eyed elderly woman, many minutes before I realised that we had hit a trail.

“I heard, of course, of this here murder business at Middlebourne”, said Mrs. Tappen, when she had assured herself of Cherry’s status as a policeman and seen her own letter produced as warrant and credentials, “and it struck me at once as there was something I could tell, but, as I remarked, too long to put in a letter. You see, I learned that this here unfortunate man what was done in so shameful, he was wearing gold rings in his ears and had a scar, an unusual one, on the left cheek. Very well, young man—that there person came to this house one afternoon about a fortnight ago!”

“Alone?” asked Cherry.

“No! He’d another man with him,” replied the landlady. “I see ’em come—I happened to be at the front, buying some fish. They come along the road from Kingshaven—walking. The other man was a big, broadly built, clean-shaven fellow, well-dressed in a blue suit—they both wore blue suits—serge, you know, young man, like sea-going men affects for their best: I took particular notice of both of ’em. They turned in here, and went into the little parlour at the side of the bar—turned in there as if they knew it quite well, though I’m sure I’d never set eyes on either of ’em before, at least, it’s not in my recollection that I ever had. But I think the big man must ha’ been in here at some time or other, for I heard him remark to his mate that the old place wasn’t noways altered.”

“How long have you had this house, ma’am?” inquired Cherry.

“In a way of speaking, ever since I was born, young man,” answered Mrs. Tappen. “I was born in it!—it was held by my father, and his father before him. I was an only child, d’ye see, and when I grew up I married Tappen—he’d come here as bar-man. Then my father died, and Tappen, he got the licence. And when Tappen died, six years ago, I got the licence. Oh, yes, you may say I’ve always had this house, or this house has always had me—I don’t rightly know which! All the same, I couldn’t call that big man to mind—still, he seemed to ha’ been here before, and, as I say, he turned, quite natural-like, into that little parlour and sat himself down.”

“Did they stay long?” inquired Cherry.

“Most of two hours,” replied Mrs. Tappen. “The big man drank brandy and water; the man with the rings in his ears, rum. They talked together—with their heads close: from what I saw of ’em it seemed to be very confidential business. At last they went off, and I saw ’em go back by the same road—Kingshaven way.”

“And that was the last, I suppose?” asked Cherry.

“No!” said Mrs. Tappen. “The big man came here again—last Monday. He walked in about four o’clock, and he asked at once if I remembered him being here a fortnight before with a friend, and if the friend had been in that day? I said I remembered him well enough, and that his friend had not been in, and at that he said he’d wait for him. He did wait, in the little parlour—he waited till well past six, but the other man never came. It seemed to me that the big man got fidgety; he was all right with his brandy-and-water and his pipe at first, but after a time he began to look out of the door, up and down the road, as if impatient. And in the end he went away, but he gave me a card on which he’d scribbled something, and asked me, if his friend came in that night, or next morning, or any time next day, to give it to him. But the man with the rings in his ears never came at all, and the card’s there, where I put it, stuck in that looking-glass.”

She took the card down from a mirror above the fire-place, and handed it to Cherry. I looked over his shoulder, and I knew then that we had been hearing of Uncle Joseph. It was another of the cards bearing the name of Crippe of Old Gravel Lane, and on the back was written a line in pencil—''To-morrow, afternoon or evening. S.S.''