Tragedy at Ravensthorpe

“What’s that weird thing over there?” he asked. As he spoke, he pointed to an object a little way off the path on which they were standing. It was a tiny building about a yard in height and a couple of yards or more in length. At the first glance it seemed like a bungalow reduced to the scale of a large doll’s house; but closer inspection showed that it was windowless, though ventilation of a sort appeared to have been provided. A miniature door closed the entrance, through which a full-grown man could gain admittance only by lying flat on the ground and wriggling with some difficulty through the narrow opening provided.

“That?” Cecil answered carelessly. “Oh, that’s one of the Fairy Houses, you know. They’re a sort of local curiosity. No matter where you are, you’ll find one of them within a couple of hundred yards of you, anywhere in the grounds.”

“Only in the grounds? Aren’t there any outside the estate?” inquired Sir Clinton. “At the first glance I took it for some sort of archaeological affair.”

“They’re old enough, I dare say,” Cecil admitted, indifferently. “A century, or a century and a half, or perhaps even more. They’re purely a Ravensthorpe product. I’ve never seen one of them outside the boundary.”

Sir Clinton left the path and made a closer examination of the tiny hut; but it presented very few points of interest in itself. Out of curiosity, he turned the handle of the door and found it moved easily.

Across the sound of the music there cut the sharp report of a small-calibre pistol fired in some adjacent room. On the heels of it came the crash and tinkle of falling glass, and, almost simultaneously, a cry for help in a man’s voice.

Sir Clinton let Joan’s hand go and turned to the door; but before he could take a step, the lights above them vanished and the room was plunged in darkness. Joan felt a hand come out and grip her arm.

“That you, Joan?”

“Yes.”

“They’ve taken out the main switch,” Sir Clinton said hurriedly. “Get hold of some man at once and show him where it is. We want the lights as quick as possible. I can trust you not to lose your head. Take a man with you for fear of trouble. We don’t know what’s happening.”

“Very well,” Joan assured him.

“Hurry!” Sir Clinton urged.

His hand dropped from her arm as he moved invisibly away towards the door. In the darkness around her she could hear movements and startled exclamations. The orchestra, after mechanically playing a couple of bars, had fallen to silence. Someone blundered into her and passed on before she could put out her hand.

“Well, at least I know where the door is,” she assured herself; and she began to move towards it.

Meanwhile the cries for help continued to come from the museum. Then, abruptly, they were hushed; and she shuddered as she thought of what that cessation might mean.

He dropped his coil of rope, stepped across to the house, and, stooping down, flung open the door. Inside, he caught a flash of some white fabric.

“It’s the beggar after all! Here! Come out of that!”

He gripped the inmate roughly and hauled him by main force out of his retreat.

“Pierrot costume, right enough!” he said to himself as he extracted the man little by little from his refuge. Then, having got his victim into the open:

“Now we’ll turn you over and have a look at your face⁠ ⁠… Good God! Maurice!”

For as he turned the man on his back, it was the face of Maurice Chacewater that met his eyes. But it was not a normal Maurice whom he saw. The features were contorted by some excessive emotion the like of which Michael had never seen.

“Let me alone, damn you,” Maurice gasped, and turned over once more on his face, resting his brow on his arm as though to shut out the spectacle of Michael’s astonishment.

“Are you ill?” Michael inquired, solicitously.

“For God’s sake leave me alone. Don’t stand there gaping. Clear out, I tell you.”

Michael looked at him in amazement.

“I’m going to have a cheerful kind of brother-in-law before all’s done, it seems,” he thought to himself.

Michael Clifton’s voice sounded over the wire.

“Can you come up to Ravensthorpe at once, Sir Clinton, or send Inspector Armadale? There’s a bad business here. Mr. Foss has been murdered. I’ve taken care that no one has got off the premises; and I’ve seen to it that his body has been left as it was found.”

Sir Clinton glanced at his wristwatch.

“I’ll drive across as soon as possible. See that things are left undisturbed, please. And collect all the people who can give any evidence, so that we needn’t waste time hunting for them. Goodbye.”

He shifted the switch of his telephone and spoke again.

“Is Inspector Armadale here just now?” he asked the constable who answered his call. “Tell him I wish to see him in my room immediately.”

“Last night,” he went on, “I was goin’ through the wood at the back o’ the house⁠—about eleven o’clock it was, as near as I can make it. At the back o’ the house there’s a strip of woodland, then a little bit of a clearin’, and then the rest of the wood. I’d come out o’ the bigger bit o’ the wood and got most o’ the way across the clearin’ when it happened. I can tell you just where it was, for I was passin’ the old ruin there⁠—the Knight’s Tower they call it.”

He paused for a moment or two, evidently finding continuous narrative rather a strain.

“The moon was well up by that time. It’s just past the full these days; and the place was as clear as day. Everythin’ was quiet, except an old owl that lives in a hollow tree up by there. I could hear the swish of my feet in the grass and mighty little else; for the grass was dewy and made a lot o’ noise with my stepping through it. Well, as I was goin’ along, all of a sudden I heard a shot. It sounded close by me; an’ I turned at once. There’s a poachin’ chap that’s given me a lot o’ trouble, an’ I didn’t put it past him to think he might be tryin’ to give me a scare. But when I turned round there was nothin’ to be seen.