Maurice Walsh - Nine Strings to your Bow

Con knew the next stages of the story well.

The police surgeon arrived. It was 8:30 Sunday morning. The body was warm. The first thing the surgeon did was to take the internal temperature of the body. It was 90°, or eight degrees less than normal. In ordinary circumstances cooling of a body after death takes place at the rate of about two degrees per hour, and that seemed to fix the time of death at about four o’clock that Sunday morning. But the circumstances were not ordinary, not by any means.

The police surgeon pointed at the carcasses of the dead dogs and asked a question: “How long were these lying on the body?” No one could tell him. The surgeon shook his head. “Then I can’t tell you when Mark Aitken died. If these dogs discovered the body shortly after death and lay on it at once, the warmth of their bodies, somewhat above the normal human temperature, would slow down cooling and rigor mortis to an extent I’m not aware of. It might be anything from four to twelve hours.”

The surgeon never did find out. No one had found out, neither the prosecution nor the defense at the trial. Superintendent Mullen had seized on this uncertainty. He had heard of the rowing between Peter and his uncle. He began hounding Peter. He demanded his alibi for the whole of the possibly critical time before Mark’s death. Peter went over the night before. He’d been playing poker at the club. And before that? He’d been fishing. Alone? Yes. Anyone see him? Peter was not aware. Caught anything? A dozen and a half first run sea trout. Where were the fish now? Peter told his story of catching them by the brook. Mullen had one-track persistence. He would stick to Peter till Peter had established his alibi. They went to look for the fish. They weren’t there. They searched every sally-bush in the radius of a hundred yards. There was no scale of a fish to be found, nor any rod or bag.

Mullen asked if there were anything in the bag but fish. Peter explained there was a telescope gaff in the netted front, a leather-bound fishing book with parchment leaves and pockets and felts. He said it contained several good casts for trout and salmon and a valuable collection of flies, many of them dressed by himself. He was an expert fly dresser. Neither rod, nor bag, nor fishing book was ever recovered. So much for Peter’s fish story. It was no alibi at all.

Finally, there was other evidence. Three men going home from a local pub a little after ten claimed they’d heard two shots fired from the direction of the path where Mark Aitken had died. At the trial Barbara Aitken claimed to have heard two shots at a much later time; at around four in the morning to be exact. Her date with Hughes Everitt for fishing was at five, but she had waked early and decided to go out to the stream ahead of time. It was about four, and she heard the shots as she first started out. A few moments later, through the woods, she saw the hurrying figure of a man in brown. At the time, she coupled the shots and the figure she saw, and added them up to Charley Wells. Later, Hughes Everitt claimed to have seen the same figure. He had been late for his date with Barbara, his alarm clock having failed him. It was nearly six when he joined her, and on the way to their meeting place he, too, saw the figure in brown.

If Barbara’s story held up, and the figure in brown had murdered Marcus Aitken at 4 a.m., then Peter had an alibi, for he’d been playing poker at the club at that hour. Some of the jury must have believed her, for they disagreed. But most people thought Barbara and Hughes were simply trying to save Peter by their story.

So, with no alibi, with his fantastic fish story unsubstantiated, with Mullen hanging onto him stubbornly as the only suspect, Peter had stood trial . . . had stood trial three times, and three times the prosecution had failed to make its case stand up. Yet there was no case nor any evidence against anyone else.

“This man in brown,” Con said to Peter, “whom Barbara and Hughes saw at different times . . . under oath they said they couldn’t identify him. But do they have ideas who he might have been?”

Peter shrugged. “They both thought at the time of Charley Wells. But you must know, if you’ve followed the case, Con Madden, that Charley Wells has an alibi.”

“I know,” Con said, “though Mullen never tried too hard to break it. There are two more points, Peter Falkner. Your missing gun was found?”

“The police found it before mid-day of that Sunday,” Peter said. “It was in the first place they searched . . . the copse where Uncle Mark’s body was found, hidden carelessly under some undergrowth. The hider had been careful enough not to leave any fingermarks. There were two empty brass-cased cartridges in the breach, and they had been fired recently, and they had been loaded with No. 6 shot, the kind which had done for Uncle Mark.”

“And the fishing tackle?” Con asked.

“They were found later at a distance from where I’d hidden them, but they weren’t intact. There wasn’t a scale of a fish in the bag. The telescope gaff was in the net all right, but the fishing book was missing.”

“It was a valuable book?”

“The contents were. A good salmon cast costs three half dollars, and a good salmon fly the same. There were at least fifty salmon flies in the leaves, many of which I’d dressed myself.”

“Then you could have identified them for certain if they’d ever been found?”

“Beyond a question of a doubt,” Peter said.

Con was silent for a long time and then he emptied his tankard. “It’s a man-sized job my partner and I are undertaking, Peter Falkner. But we’ll give it a man-sized try.”

I

THE day after Peter Falkner had talked with Con Madden in Edinburgh he stepped down off the evening train at Eglintoun, and felt as alien as on that evening six years before when he had arrived for the first time. And, yet, he wanted to feel at home. In five years he had come to recognize that this was the place he wished most to live in. He wanted to take hold of the Danesford estate and reshape its economy, to redress, as far as in him lay, the old sins of landlordism, to introduce co-operation and fellowship and security. . . . And now he felt the stranger once more, and would have to begin all over again under a burden that might not be borne.

Con Madden came out of the compartment next to Peter’s, brushed by his shoulder, and took half a dozen steps to the bookstall. Close by, a short, sturdy man, sporting a jut of spade beard, was reading a paper-covered book. Con glanced aside at him, caught his hard green eye and spoke casually.

“Well, Mr. Glover! Still here, I see?”

“I postponed my departure for a few days, sir.” Daniel Glover’s voice was uncordial.

“Any rooms available at the Spa Hotel?”

“It won’t be half-full yet, sir,” said the stallkeeper.

“I believe number 86 is available,” said Glover, “that is, if you intend patronizing the establishment.”

“I might move farther out into the country,” Con said.

“That might be advisable,” murmured Glover and moved farther along the stall to browse in The Hind Let Loose.

That is all that these two casual acquaintances said or had need to say to each other. Con turned to find out what was happening to Peter Falkner.

The porter had come hurrying along the train and impulsively thrust forth his hand.

“You’re welcome back, Mr. Falkner! Everyone is glad about you. Man, you’re lookin’ gran’.”

“Thanks, Tom,” Peter said easily. He could always control his voice. “There are some things in the van for the Home Farm. Chuck them in the waiting room, and one of the lads will run down later.”