Chapter XXXII

They found Colonel Lockwood disposing of the remains of an excellent lunch; and even in his excitement Michael found time to regret that Wilson had apparently forgotten all about a midday meal. He took the Colonel aside for a few minutes’ conversation, as a result of which the latter left the house rapidly in the direction of the police-station, while Wilson and Michael returned to the inn.

“We can’t get at the piers any way but by water, can we?” Wilson asked the landlord. “Then we’d better have your boat ready. There’s a party from the station coming along directly with a drag-net.” Michael used the interval to fortify himself a little with Wason’s extremely good beer.

In a very short time the party, which consisted of the Colonel, Sergeant Linton, and two policemen with the net, arrived on the tow-path, where the boat was waiting for them. Wilson, with the landlord and the two policemen, climbed in, while the others watched the proceedings from the bank. For a little while the boat manœuvred about, Wason giving the exact bearings of the old pier, while Wilson peered over the side into the clear water.

“See that, waving about among the weeds down there?” the watchers heard him say at last.

“It’s a mighty thick weed,” Wason agreed.

“That?” one of the policeman said; “that ain’t no weed. That’s a rope-end.”

“Precisely. That’s what I’m after, I think. Heave to, will you? And give me the boat-hook.”

After two or three tries, Wilson succeeded in getting the boat-hook to catch in the rope, and then began pulling on it gently. It did not move. He tried again and again, using a little more strength each time, but still the rope did not budge.

“Maybe it’s fastened to the pier,” Wason suggested, offering to assist. But Wilson declined.

“We mustn’t break it,” he said.

The drag-net was next called into play. “Be very careful,” said Wilson. “There’s something down there, on the pier, I think, which I want to get up. But if you knock it off into the mud, we shall never get it again. Go at it gently.”

For a few minutes the drag-net was manipulated to and fro. Then one of the policemen gave an exclamation. “That’s got something!” he said. “But we can’t move it,” he added a moment later. “It’s far too heavy for the net.”

“Stay just as you are,” Wilson commanded. He drew a long, straight wire from the bottom of the boat, and began to probe for the object. “I’ve got it. Now, pull _hard_ for a second--stop! It moved,” he announced, bringing back his wire. “But how the devil are we to get whatever it is into the boat?”

There was a moment’s pause for consideration, while Wilson surveyed the land. “Somebody’ll have to go down for it, I’m afraid,” he said at last, “and tie a rope round it, and maybe we’ll be able to haul it in. I’ve got a coil of rope here. Do you know of any one who can dive a bit?” he asked the policemen.

“I can, sir,” one of them said. “I don’t mind going down. But I don’t think you’ll get her in, sir, not without you capsize the boat, and you’ll lose her again.”

“Strikes me,” the other grumbled, “what you’re trying to pull up’s a bit of the old pier.”

“It isn’t,” Wilson said. “It moved. But I’m not sure you’re not right,” he said to the first policeman. “And we can’t risk losing it. I think,” he added after a moment’s pause, “the best way will be to fix on ropes and haul the thing in at that window,” pointing to the window of Meston’s room. “Then we’ll be able to see what it is. I suppose it won’t pull your wall out, Wason?”

“That it won’t,” Wason said. “That wall’s a foot thick and more.”

“Then what we want,” said Wilson, “is plenty of strong rope. We’d better land and look for it.”

The preparations took some little time, but eventually some stout rope-ends were hanging out of the window, while Michael, the Colonel, and the sergeant stood in the room prepared to haul. Wilson stood at the window, and Wason remained below directing operations, while the volunteer diver began to remove his clothes. “I’ll go down and have a look round first,” he called up to the window. His colleague meanwhile collected the ends of rope in the boat, which Wason was balancing over the indicated spot. In another moment he had disappeared over the side.

The watchers at the window craned their necks, but could see nothing beyond bubbles and a stirring of mud from the river-bed. In a few seconds, however, the diver reappeared, spluttering and brushing water from his eyes. “It’s a big trunk,” he gasped. “I got hold of it, but it won’t move an inch.”

A trunk! Absurd visions of buried treasure floated across Michael’s mind; but Wilson seemed completely unmoved. “Anything to fasten the ropes to?” he asked.

“Oh, aye, that’ll be easy enough. It’s got good strong handles, and plenty of room for fastening ’em. Give me a couple of them ropes.”

Down went the diver again, and this time it seemed hours before he reappeared, announcing that he wanted another rope for safety’s sake. This was supplied, and after a little more delay he brought up the news that the trunk was now ready to be hauled in. He climbed back into the boat with some difficulty--“Easy on the rope!” said Wason--and after a perfunctory rub-down began resuming his clothes.

“Ready?” asked Wilson from the window.

“Half a minute, sir, till we get the boat clear,” was the reply.

After a long and wearisome pull the watchers could see something gradually approaching the surface of the water. In a series of lurches it came to light, and disclosed itself as a large tin trunk, covered with mud and waterweed, and trailing from it a broken length of cord. “Sakes alive!” Wason cried, nearly capsizing the boat in his excitement. “If that isn’t the missus’s old tin trunk from the loft! How in Christendom did that get to the bottom of the river?”

At this point there was a muffled curse from inside the room, and the trunk redescended with a jerk into the water. Turning to see what had happened Wilson observed the sergeant standing up and indignantly rubbing lacerated hands. “We shan’t get it in this way,” Colonel Lockwood said. “There isn’t weight enough among us. Better get my fellows in.”

“Right,” Wilson said. “Let her go again, gently. Now then,” he called, “you in the boat, you’re not wanted any longer there. Come round and help haul.” A roar of laughter directed his attention to the bridge, where an interested crowd had collected. “Oh, and clear the bridge, will you? We don’t want an audience. Linton, you’re the lightest weight; you go out and keep the place cleared. We can do without you, I think.”

His instructions were carried out to the letter, and at length, after a terrific haul, during which they more than once nearly lost it, the trunk became visible above the window-ledge, Wilson fending it off from the wall. “Now, then, last pull. Mind the window! That’s done it.” All stood up and mopped their brows as the trunk at last came to rest on the floor of Meston’s room.

“What on earth do you suppose is in it, to make it that weight?” the Colonel asked.

“Shall we look?” Wilson said. He began to tug at a double rope which was wound about the trunk’s middle. Sodden by the water, the knots refused to budge and had to be cut. Then, while all held their breath, he slowly raised the lid. Michael, looking over his shoulder, gave a sigh of disappointment.

The trunk was full to the brim of a ramshackle collection of pieces of rusty metal, apparently parts of some disused machine. Wilson unpacked these and disclosed beneath them something which gleamed like marble, and on being lifted out turned out to be a piece of sculpture representing a lady in a classical posture, with nothing on. A similar lady followed her, and left the trunk empty. “God bless my soul!” said Colonel Lockwood.

Wason stared at the figures, and scratched his head. “Well, I’m damned!” he said. “If those aren’t the statues I turned out of the coffee-room because the missus said they wasn’t decent! They’ve been up in my loft these fifteen years, and I never give them another thought. But what the dickens would anybody want to put them in a trunk for?”

“That’s quite simple,” said Wilson. “The murderers overdid it a little, or we shouldn’t have had all this trouble. But the whole thing’s nothing more than a weight used to sink the body.”

“The body!”

“Meston’s body,” he added.

“What! Then you mean,” the landlord said, “he was killed here, in this house, and thrown out of window wi’ that trunk tied on him?”

“That’s what I mean, more or less. See here.” Wilson picked up the loose end of rope which had been floating in the river. “This has been broken. If you joined it on”--he brought the end close to another which protruded from a knot--“you’ll see it made a loop. And that loop’s about the size of a man’s waist measurement. What clearly happened is this. The murderers tied the trunk to the body, and sank it in the river. But it fell on the old pier, which caught the trunk and left the body to float freely at the end of the cord--that is, about three or four feet below the surface. Nobody saw it--it’s not in the main stream--until our friend Jarge, who I suspect must have got a little out of his course, fouled it with the tug. The blow knocked it sideways, and he then saw the face in the water on the near side of the barge. When Bill hooked it, I judge from his account he must actually have got his hook in the rope itself, so that when he tried to pull it in, he was really pulling on the whole weight of the trunk. Naturally it wouldn’t come, until Bill, who is a pretty hefty fellow, succeeded in breaking the rope--you can see where it’s frayed. Then, of course, the body, being released from the trunk, came up ‘like a daisy,’ as he said, and they got it on board.”

“Good God!” the Colonel said. “You mean the devil strangled him first, and then drowned him with the trunk round his waist! What a diabolical thing! And if it hadn’t been for you we should never have known!”

“If it hadn’t been for the pier,” said Wilson. “If the trunk hadn’t happened to land directly on the pier it would have buried itself in the mud at the bottom, and it is ten thousand to one that neither it nor the body would ever have been seen again. The murderer or murderers owe their failure to a lucky--for him an unlucky--chance. If they had been able to avoid that pier----”

“They’d have got away with it,” said Michael quietly.

“They may yet, easily enough,” Colonel Lockwood said gloomily. “It doesn’t seem to me we’re much nearer knowing who they were.”

“One step at a time,” Wilson reassured him. “We’ve got some data, anyway. We know that they had to choose this particular place.”

“Well, that’s natural,” Wason said. “It’s just below Mr. Meston’s window.”

“And below something else, I think. Where did you say this stuff came from?”

“Out o’ the loft above.”

“Where is the loft? I didn’t know you had one.”

“Above this room, in the roof. Ye can’t see it from below, sir, but it and this room, they was both part of the old grain store years ago, when this place was a malting house. There warn’t any ceiling to this room then, it went straight up to the rafters. Then my father, when he took it, he put a ceiling in, so’s to make a room of the bottom part, and turned the top space into a loft. That’s a matter of forty or fifty years ago, and we don’t use it for nothin’ now but lumber. But it’s thar all right.”

“How did you get up to it?” Wilson asked. “I haven’t seen a stair.”

“It’s behind a door, sir, just at the end of the passage that goes to your room. It’s the old stair that used to lead up to the platform they had to steady the sacks when they hauled ’em in from the grain barges. There used to be a crane of some sort in the gable to fetch ’em up; but my father, he took it down.”

“Then the loft’s our next place of call,” said Wilson decidedly. “Leave this trunk where it is, and lock the billiard-room door.”

“You know, Michael,” he said, as they mounted to the first floor, “I ought to be shot for not having thought of that before.”

“Damned if I know what you’ve thought of now,” Michael said.

“I mean the weight,” Wilson explained. “It did occur to me, when I first heard your story, that it was odd that nobody should have noticed the body sooner, and I wondered whether it could have got caught in weed somewhere. When I saw it, however, I realised that there wasn’t enough weed on it for that to be true. Then that tree, and John Loring’s tryst, came in to confuse the trail, and I never so much as thought of the corpse having been tied to something till I realised this morning that whatever had happened couldn’t have happened at the old bridge.”

“Why couldn’t it?”

“Because of the rope,” said Wilson enigmatically. “Here we are.”