Freeman Wills Crofts - The Groote Park Murder

The curator turned to his companion.

‘This is Hoskins, one of our gardeners,’ he explained. ‘It was he who found the book. If you are ready, let us go to the shed.’

The four men passed round the end of the glass-houses and followed a path which led behind the belt of evergreen shrubs to the building in question. It was a small place, about eight feet by ten only, built close up to the boundary, in fact, the boundary wall, raised a few feet for the purpose, formed one of its sides. The other three walls were of brick, supporting a lean-to roof of reddish brown tiles. There was no window, light being obtained only from the door. The shed contained a rough bench along one wall, a few tools and flowerpots, and a bag or two of artificial manure. The place was very secluded, being hidden from the gardens by the glass-houses and the evergreen shrubs.

‘Now, Hoskins,’ Mr Segboer directed, as the little party stopped on the threshold, ‘explain to Inspector Vandam what you found.’

‘This morning about seven o’clock I had to come to this here shed for to get a line and trowel for some plants as I was bedding out,’ explained the gardener, whose tongue betrayed the fact of his Cockney origin, ‘and when I looked in at the door I saw just at once that somebody had been in through the night, or since five o’clock yesterday evening anyhow. The floor seemed someway different, and then, after looking a while, I saw that it had been swept clean, and then mould sprinkled over it again. You can see that for yourselves if you look.’

The floor was of concrete, brought to a smooth surface, though dark coloured from the earth which had evidently lain on it. This earth had certainly been brushed away from the centre, and was heaped up for a width of some eighteen inches round the walls. A space of about seven feet by five had thus been cleared, and the marks of the brush were visible round the edges. But the space had been partly re-covered by what seemed to be handfuls of earth, and here and there round the walls it looked as if the brush had been used for scattering back some of the swept-up material.

Vandam turned to the man.

‘You say this was done since five o’clock last night,’ he said. ‘Were you here at that time?’

‘Yes, I left in the line and trowel when I quit work last night.’

‘And what was the floor like then?’

‘Like it always was before. There was leaf mould and sand and loam on it; just a little, you know, that had fallen from the bench. But it was all over it.’

‘You found something else?’

The man pointed to the corner opposite the bench.

‘Them there ashes were not there before.’

In the corner was a little heap of burnt paper, and now that the idea was suggested to Vandam, he believed he could detect the smell of fire. Still standing outside the door, he nodded slowly and went on:

‘Anything else?’

‘Ay, there was the pocketbook. When I was coming out with the line and trowel, I saw something sticking out of a heap of sand just there. I picked it up and found it was a pocketbook, and when I looked in the front of it I saw the name was Albert Smith. I wondered who had been in the shed, for I didn’t know anyone of that name, and I slipped the book into my pocket, saying to myself as how I’d give it to the boss here first time I saw him. Well, then, after a while I heard that a man called Albert Smith had been found dead on the railway just back of the wall here, so I thinks to myself there’s maybe something more in it than what meets the eye, and I had better give the book to the boss at once, and so I did.’

‘And here it is,’ Mr Segboer added, taking a small notebook bound in brown leather from his pocket and handing it to Vandam.

There was no question of the identity of the owner, for the same address—that of Messrs. Hope Bros. of Mees Street—followed the name on the flyleaf. The book was printed in diary form, each two pages showing a week. Vandam glanced quickly over it. The notes seemed either engagements, or reminders about provision business. There was nothing in the space for the previous evening.

Vandam questioned the gardener closely on his statement, but without gaining additional details. Mr Segboer could give no helpful information, and Vandam dismissed both after thanking them and, more by force of habit than of deliberate purpose, warning them not to repeat what they had told him.

To Inspector Vandam the circumstances were far from clear. From what he had just learned, it seemed reasonable to conclude that Smith had visited the shed some time between five and eleven on the previous evening, probably near eleven, as the sergeant’s suggestion that he had been killed while leaving the Park after the gates were closed was likely enough. But was there not, at least, a suggestion of something more? Did the visit to the shed not mean an interview with someone, a secret meeting, and, therefore, possibly for some shady purpose. For a secret interview probably no better place could have been found in the whole of Middeldorp. If it were approached and quitted by the railway after dark, as it might have been in this instance, the chances of discovery would be infinitesimal. What could Smith have been doing there?

At first Vandam thought of a mere vulgar intrigue, that he was meeting some girl with whom he did not wish to be seen. But the sweeping of the floor seemed to indicate some more definite purpose. What ever could it have been?

It was fairly clear, Vandam imagined, that the scattering of the earth over the floor was done to remove the traces of its having been swept. If so, it had been badly done and it had failed in its object. Was this, he wondered, due to lack of care, or to haste, or to working in the dark?

He could not answer any of these questions, but the more he thought over them, the more likely he thought it that Smith had been engaged with another or others in some secret and perhaps sinister business.

Inspector Vandam was mildly intrigued by the whole affair, but it did not seem of passing importance. He decided that after taking a general look round, he would return to headquarters and consult his Chief as to whether the matter should be further followed up. He therefore turned from the shed to its immediate surroundings.

At the end of the shed, between the path and the boundary wall, the ground was covered with low heaps of leaf mould. The stuff had evidently lain there for a considerable time, for the surface had grown smooth, almost like soil. Across this smooth surface and close to the end of the shed passed two lines of footsteps, one coming and the other going.

Vandam stood looking at the marks. They were vague and blurred and quite useless as prints, and yet there was something peculiar about them. At first he had assumed—without reason, as he now realised—that they were Smith’s tracks approaching and leaving the shed. But now he saw they had been made by different persons. Those receding were closer together and much deeper than the others, and he began to picture a tall, thin man arriving, and a short, stout one going away.

And there he would probably have left it, had not Sergeant Clarke at that moment walked across the leaf-mould to look over the wall. Almost subconsciously Vandam noticed that his steps made comparatively little impression, about the same, indeed, as those of his hypothetic thin man. But Clarke was not thin. He was a big man, tall, broad and well developed.

‘I say, Clarke,’ Vandam looked up suddenly, ‘what do you weigh?’

‘Just turn the scale at sixteen stone,’ returned the other stolidly, no trace of surprise at the question showing on his wooden countenance.

‘I thought so,’ Vandam muttered, turning his eyes again on the footprints. Somewhat puzzled, he walked across the strip himself, and turned to see what marks he had made. Vandam was a small man, thin though wiry, and his weight, he knew, was just under twelve stone. The prints he had left were considerably lighter than Clarke’s.