The Markenmore Mystery/Chapter 13

The detective instinct which was Blick's second nature rose, strong and eager, when he heard this announcement. He, too, glanced at Grimsdale in knowing fashion.

"Something to tell?" he suggested.

"Didn't say as much to me," answered the landlord, "but I should say so. Came hanging round our side-door till he got a sight of me, and then asked if you were in, and if he could see you, all to yourself—didn't want anybody else to know."

"Bring him in—and tell him nobody will know anything whatever about it," commanded Blick. "Strictly private, eh?"

Grimsdale glanced at the window, and crossing over to it, drew its curtains. He left the room—to return a minute later with a young man in whipcord clothes and smart Newmarket gaiters; a shrewd-eyed, keen-faced fellow who regarded the detective pretty much as he might have regarded a slippery fox just breaking cover.

"William Pegge, Mr. Blick," said Grimsdale.

Blick nodded affably to his shy and watchful visitor, and pointed to a chair close to his own by the cheery fire.

"Good evening, Pegge," he said. "Sit down—will you have a drink?"

Pegge slid into the easy chair, put his hat on the ground, and grinned sheepishly.

"Well, thank you, sir," he answered. "Don't mind a drop of ale."

Blick looked at Grimsdale, who went out and returned with a frothing tankard, which he set down at the groom's elbow.

"See that we're not disturbed, Grimsdale," said Blick. "If anybody—never mind who it is—wants me, say I'm engaged."

The landlord withdrew and closed the door and Blick pushed his tobacco pouch over to his visitor, who was fingering his pipe.

"Try a bit of that," he said hospitably, "and light up. Well—you wanted to have a talk with me, Pegge. "What is it?"

Before Pegge replied to this direct invitation, he filled and lighted his pipe, got it fairly going, and lifting the tankard of ale to his lips, murmured an expression of his best respect to his entertainer. Then, with a look round his surroundings, indicative of a desire for strict privacy, he gave Blick a shrewd glance.

"I shouldn't like to get into trouble," he remarked.

"Just so!" agreed Blick. "You won't—through anything that you say to me."

"Nor yet to get anybody else into trouble," continued Pegge. "That is—unless so be as they're deserving of it!"

"Exactly!—unless they're deserving of it," said Blick. "In that case, you wouldn't mind?"

"Don't mind telling what I know to be true," replied Pegge. He looked the detective well over again. "I s'pose," he went on, "I s'pose that if I tell you—something—I should have to tell it again—as a witness, like?"

"All depends on what it is, Pegge," answered Blick. "You might—if it's very important. Or, you mightn't—if it's merely something that you want to tell me, between ourselves. Anyway, whatever it is, you'll come to no harm—so long as you speak the plain truth."

"Them witnesses, now?" suggested Pegge. "Before crowners, and magistrates, and judges at the 'sizes—are they protected? Nobody can't do nothing at 'em for telling what they know, eh?"

"Strictly protected, in every way," said Blick, with emphatic decision. "Bad job for anybody who interfered with a witness, Pegge! Make yourself comfortable on that point, my lad."

Pegge nodded, took another mouthful of ale, and seemed to make up his mind.

"Well, I do know something!" he said suddenly. "I was half in a mind to tell it this morning, up there at the inquest"

"You were there?" asked Blick.

"Most of the time," assented Pegge. "I heard all that Grimsdale said, anyhow. It was along of what he said that I thought of coming forward, d'ye see, but I didn't exactly know what to do, and so, when I hear 'em talk about an adjournment, I thought I'd put it off, and think matters over. However, when I hear you were stopping here to look after things, I thought I'd mention it to you, like."

"Quite right, Pegge—much obliged to you," said Blick. "Make yourself easy. And now—what is it?"

Pegge removed his pipe from his lips, and leaned a little nearer to his listener.

"Well," he said, "it's like this here. You'd hear what Grimsdale said about Mr. Guy Markenmore coming to this house that night before he was murdered, and being in company with two other gentlemen?"

"Of course," responded Blick, "I heard it."

"One of 'em," continued Pegge, "a tall man—tall as Mr. Harborough? So Grimsdale said—from what he see of him, as they was going away?"

"Yes—I remember," said Blick.

"Well, 1'll tell 'ee something," Pegge went on, showing signs of rising interest in his own story. "Grimsdale 'ud tell you that I'm groom at Mrs. Tretheroe's—we've a coachman and two grooms there—I'm head groom. Our mistress has five horses at present—couple of hunters, two carriage horses, and a very good cob. Now, on Monday afternoon, this here cob—'tain't common sort of an animal, for Mrs. Tretheroe, she give a hundred and forty guineas for him only a month since—took ill—colic, or something o ' that sort—and I had to fetch the veterinary surgeon to him. The vet., he was at our place for an hour or two that evening a-doctoring of him, and he sort o' pulled him round, but says he to our coachman and the rest of us, 'One of you chaps,' he says, '’ll have to sit up with this cob all night, and look well after him.' So I offered to do that—t'other two is married men, and lives in the village here; me being a single man, I lives over the stables, d'ye see?"

"I see," said Blick. "You were on the spot."

"On the spot, so to speak," agreed Pegge. "Well, the vet., he leaves us some medicine, and he tells me what to do, all through the night, with this here cob, and so, when it gets late, and all the rest of 'em had gone, I gets my supper in the servants ' hall, and takes a bit o' something to eat during the night, and settles down as comfortable as I could in the saddle-room, next to the loose-box where we had this poorly cob. He went on all right, that cob did—hadn't no trouble with he at all, and he's right now—quite fit again. However, that's neither here nor there, in a way of speaking—what I mention the cob for is to show you how I come to be up all that Monday night, d'ye see?"

"I understand," said Blick. "It's all clear, Pegge. Go ahead!"

"Well," continued Pegge, "there's nothing happens till about a quarter to two o'clock in the morning. I know it was that 'cause I had to keep looking at the cob every so often from the time the vet. left him, and that was one of the times. I'd just been into his loose-box, and come out when I remembered that I'd no tobacco left in my pouch. But I had plenty in a tin in my bedroom, so I went off to fetch it. Now then, you must understand that our stabling at the Dower House is separated from the drive by a high hedge of macrocarpus trees—shrubbery, d'ye see? I was going along this hedge side, between it and the coach-house wall, on my way to the stairs that leads up to my bedroom, when I hear somebody coming down the drive, t'other side the hedge—soft, like. So I stops, dead"

"Wait a minute," interrupted Blick. "What were you walking on, yourself, Pegge? What sort of a pavement, or path?"

"Asphalt—laid down recent," answered Pegge, promptly. "Runs all along the front of our stabling. Put down when Mrs. Tretheroe came and had things smartened up."

"And what had you on your feet—what sort of shoes?"

"Pair of old tennis shoes that the housekeeper had given me," replied Pegge. "Some gentleman had left 'em behind him."

"Very well," said Blick. "Go on. You stopped dead"

"Stopped just where I was, stole in between the bushes, and looked into the drive. Then I see a man coming down it, from the side of the house, where there's a door by which you can get out into the back gardens. He come right past me, walking on the grass path at the side of the gravel roadway."

"You saw him clearly?"

"Considering it was night—a clear night, though—I see him as clearly as what I see you! That is—with a bit of difference, like."

"You saw him clearly enough to know who he was?"

"I did!"

"Well?" asked Blick, eyeing his informant closely. "Who was he?"

Pegge looked with equal closeness at his questioner.

"That German gentleman that's staying with our missis!" he answered.

"Baron von Eckhardstein?"

"That's him! The Baron we calls him."

"You're absolutely certain of this, Pegge?"

"Take my dying oath of it!" asserted Pegge.

Blick refilled and lighted his pipe, and smoked in silence for a minute or two.

"Well," he said at last, "where did he go?"

"Went a few yards down the drive, and then turned into a path that goes through the shrubberies towards the main road," replied Pegge. "It comes out into the main road very nearly opposite the cottages, just beyond this place—the Sceptre. There's a little iron swing-gate in the holly-hedge—you'll maybe have noticed it? He'd come on to the road through that—about two hundred yards from here."

"And you say that was at about a quarter to two, Tuesday morning?"

"At all about that," affirmed Pegge. "It would be about six or eight minutes to, when I see him. 'Twas a quarter to, anyway, when I see the cob, and I wasn't in his box many minutes. Then I went straight to get my tobacco-tin, and heard these footsteps."

"I suppose you thought it was a queer thing—a guest going out of the house at that time of night, didn't you?" suggested Blick.

"Uncommon queer, I thought!" agreed Pegge. "But then, 'twasn't any concern of mine. And I shouldn't ha' taken much more notice of it if I hadn't see him again."

"Oh!" said Blick. "Ah! You did see him again, then?"

"I did—and when it was getting light, too—see him clear enough that time!"

"And what time was that?"

"We've a clock over our stables," said Pegge. "It had just struck four."

"Four o'clock!" repeated Blick meditatively. "Um! And where did you see him at four o'clock? Same place?"

"No," replied Pegge. "Just before four o'clock I began to feel as if I could do with a cup of tea. I'd got a teapot with some tea in it, but, of course, I wanted boiling water. Now, we've a gas-stove in a little room at the end of the stables that our coach man uses as a sort of sitting-room for himself, d'ye see, so I went off there to light it, and boil some water in a kettle. It struck four while I was in there. I'd just put on the kettle, when I heard it strike four. Now, there's a window in that little room as looks out on the back gardens—they run from the back of the Dower House to the foot of the park, where it begins to rise towards the downs. There's a thick plantation of pine and larch between the gardens and the park, and I suddenly see this her Baron come out of it, as if he'd come down from the high ground above."

"Was he alone?" asked Blick.

"Oh, he was alone, right enough, just as before," replied Pegge.

"How far away were you from him?"

"Twenty-five or thirty yards."

"Where did he go that time?"

"Walked down the side of a big holly-hedge towards the same door that I reckon he'd come out of."

"Could he be seen from the house?"

"No—I reckon not," said Pegge. "There's a thick belt of trees—beeches, just come into leaf—between the house and those gardens."

"You saw him pass that?"

"Saw him go into it," said Pegge. "Once through it, he'd be close to that side-door I spoke of."

"I suppose you know the Dower House pretty well, Pegge?" asked Blick.

"Yes," asserted Pegge. "I was there before Mrs. Tretheroe came and took it. Been there, off and on, ever since I was a young 'un. Went there first when I was fourteen."

"Well, that side-door, now? What is it. Where does it lead, when you get in?"

"Into a lobby that runs along the back of the house. There's a staircase opens from it—a wide staircase—that comes out, through a double door at the top, into the big staircase in the hall."

"So that anybody coming from the bedrooms could easily get at it?"

"Easy enough!" assented Pegge.

"I suppose there'd be none of the servants about at four o'clock in the morning?" enquired Blick, after a moment's thought.

Pegge opened his mouth in a broad grin.

"Not likely!" he said. "Servants' getting-up bell goes at six o'clock. Catch any of 'em being up before that!"

"Talking about servants," observed Blick, "do you know Mrs. Tretheroe's maid?"

Pegge smiled. "Daffy Halliwell?" he answered. "Course I do!"

"Well, and who is Daffy Halliwell? And what's her proper Christian name?"

"Daphne," said Pegge promptly. "Who is she? Why, her father was a bit of a farmer t'other side of the downs, beyond Markenmore Hollow. Dead now he is. There was two o' them girls—Daffy and Myra. Daffy went out to India with Mrs. Tretheroe, and come back with her. Myra—I don't know what's become o' she. Disappeared, like, just about that time—though I recollect now she was going to be married to a chap as lived near them—Jim Roper, woodman, to Sir Anthony."

Blick paid little attention to these details; he was thinking over the principal points of the groom's information.

"Now, Pegge," he said a moment later, "an important question—am I the first person to whom you've told this story?"

"You're the very first!" replied Pegge promptly. "I haven't mentioned it to a soul but you!"

"Didn't ever remark to any of your fellow-servants that you'd seen Baron von Eckhardstein out at that time of the morning?" suggested Blick.

"No!" affirmed Pegge. "I'll not deny that I might ha' done, just in a casual way, if I hadn't heard of Mr. Guy Markenmore's murder that morning. But I did hear of it, very early—earlier than most folks—before either our coachman or the second groom came to the stables—so I said nothing."

"Who told you of the murder—so early?" asked Blick.

"Our village policeman," replied Pegge. "I was standing at the end of our east walk when he and Hobbs went up the hill-side to the downs; Hobbs had been to fetch him. I should have gone up with them to Markenmore Hollow if I could have left the cob. I'd just walked along to the edge of our grounds, like, to get a bit of fresh air after being all night in the saddle-room, when the policeman and Hobbs hurried by. And putting one thing to another, I thought I'd hold my tongue. And I have done—till now."

"And at last you thought you'd tell me? Well, you've done right," said Blick. "No harm'll come to you, Pegge—you're safe enough."

"Well, I'd a reason why I come to you tonight," remarked Pegge, with a sudden shrewd look. "I reckoned up that it was best."

"Yes? Now, why?" asked Blick.

"Because this here Baron is off tomorrow morning," replied Pegge.

"Leaving!"

"Ah!" exclaimed Blick. "What time?"

"I've orders to drive him to Selcaster railway station to catch the 10.8 express to Victoria," said Pegge. "We shall leave here at half-past nine."

"There's a Mrs. Hamilton there at the Dower House, isn't there?" asked Blick.

"A friend of Mrs. Tretheroe's? Is she leaving, too?"

"No," answered Pegge. "Just him. I'm driving him in the dogcart. Only him."

Blick rose from his chair as a sign that the inter view was over.

"Very well, Pegge," he said. "Now then, just remember this—not a word to any living soul! Just go on as if everything was ordinary. You'll hear from me. You did right to come, and remember what I say—keep all to yourself!"

When the groom had gone, after taking amusing precautions to make sure that no customer of the Sceptre saw him leave the detective's sitting-room, Blick thought over what he had just heard. There was no doubt in his mind now that the Baron von Eckhardstein was the second man of the midnight meeting at the Sceptre; Pegge's story, and his own knowledge that von Eckhardstein had abstracted the pipe from the solicitor's table at the inquest, convinced him of that. But was that sufficient to make one suspect him of murder? Blick thought not—emphatically not. He could scarcely believe it possible that a man would murder another, remain in close proximity to the scene of the murder, and generally act as von Eckhardstein seemed to have acted. Yet—he might know something; probably did, and whether there was sufficient grounds or not for accusing him of actual guilt or complicity, there were certainly plenty for requesting him to give some account of himself. If such a request were suddenly sprung upon him, there might be revelations.

"I'll have something out of him!" muttered Blick. "Something he must know—and he'll have to speak!"

With that resolve strong in his mind he sought Grimsdale, ordered breakfast for seven-thirty sharp next morning, and bade the landlord have a cab ready to carry him into Selcaster at eight o'clock.