cancelled the appointment on the score of his disappearance.
Well, he has turned up again, not quick but dead. His body has been dug up from the floor of a derelict cottage by the village idiot. As though the murder of Merle Patterson, whose body, you will remember, was found near the sheepwash at the end of the village, were not sufficiently mysterious, we now have this bizarre occurrence to add to the tally.
The inquest on Miss Patterson resulted in a verdict of murder by person or persons unknown, although the police, acting somewhat precipitately, had arrested a gypsy named Bellamy Smith for the crime. They were obliged to release him, however, as, thanks to two intelligent young children and their uncle, Bellamy was able to prove a complete alibi. The contention of the police that he had suffered a torn ear in his struggle with the girl was shown to be mistaken. His earring had been dragged out during a scuffle with some drunken louts in a wrestling booth at the annual fair.
There has been considerable speculation as to what the girl was doing down at the sheepwash at all so late at night, and still in her fancy dress, but, since the release of the gypsy, the police believe that she was not killed where she was found. They think she was murdered very much nearer the manor house, probably inside a deserted lodge in the grounds, and are busily searching for any clues which will prove this. It is a tenable hypothesis and seems to fit in with the facts so far as we know them, but they are merely skeletal and inconclusive.
Whether the two murders are connected in any way seems doubtful. The police are inclined to think that we have a homicidal maniac roaming the neighbourhood and Mrs Kempson, who has called me in again more, I think, to bear her company in that big old house than for any other reason, inclines to the same view and has despatched her young grandson, his sister and their parents to their London flat to be out of harm's way. Her adopted son is also in London, where, I understand, he has employment, so she really is very lonely and I suspect apprehensive too.
The whole case bristles with difficulties. To begin with, there seems little doubt that Mr Ward was, to say the least, an eccentric. According to the respectable people with whom, at Mrs Kempson's expense, he lodged, he was a silent, ruminative man who gave no trouble but who was strangely uncommunicative. The first indication they had of his mental derangement was when he began by digging up one of their flower-beds, passed on to a large chicken-run and dug that up, then began operations on the boardless floor of the tumbledown cottage where somebody (most probably his murderer, but this has not been established) later buried his body.
The people with whom he lodged are named Christina (Kirstie) and Arthur Landgrave, and they have staying with them the two intelligent young children I mentioned. These are aged ten and eight and from them I have derived some of my information. Having watched Mr Ward's operations on the flower-bed and in the chicken- run, they also saw him come out from the ruined cottage, where he had begun to dig a hole, and later they observed him standing in the sheepwash wielding a pickaxe. Later still, they discovered that he had considerably enlarged the hole in the cottage floor so that it resembled a grave. As we now know, this resemblance became apparent to somebody other than the children.
To revert to Mr Ward, until his body was discovered, the police, guided by a statement from Mrs Kempson after the gypsy had been released from custody, thought that Mr Ward might have killed the girl, particularly as a spade believed to be his was found at the bottom of the sheepwash. According to Mrs Kempson, she had received complaints from the Landgraves concerning his strange behaviour and had no difficulty in believing that he could have become homicidal.
The trouble about this supposition is that the medical evidence is not conclusive as to whether the girl or Ward died first. You probably know how impossible it can be to become dogmatic in such matters when the time limits can fall within a matter of hours and when one body has been in the open air for a comparatively short time, whereas the other has been buried for several days before being found.
Besides, if Ward killed the girl and then committed suicide in a most unlikely manner, who buried him? Otherwise, who killed both of them, and why? Further to that, are the police looking for two murderers in a small village which is built on only two streets? It seems unlikely.
I will tell you what else I have found out so far, although you will appreciate that, as the newspapers say of the police, I am still pursuing my enquiries. Before I go on I must add that the police have uncovered no motive for either death which seems capable of bearing closer examination. Mr Ward appears to have given up all claim to the Hill Manor estate, which is now entailed on Mrs Kempson's grandson, a boy of nine named Lionel Kempson- Conyers, and as for Merle Patterson, she appears to have known nobody in the village except the people who attended the birthday party.
In any case, it seems that she was present without having received a card of invitation, but was acting as stand-in for her brother, so it hardly looks as though her death could have been premeditated, neither can anybody trace the slightest connexion between her death and that of Mr Ward except that the same murder weapon may have been used for both. The police have taken possession of a heavy garden spade which they believe was the implement employed.
One point of interest which has emerged is that the dead girl, at her own request, had changed costumes at the party with young Lionel Kempson-Conyers, but whether the fact has any bearing on her death has yet to be discovered. I have the assurance from Doctor Tassall, who was present when Merle's body was found and who was the negotiating agency between the medical students who had fabricated the costumes and their subsequent purchase by the Kempson family, that, except for size and a very slight variation in colouring, the exchanged costumes were exactly alike, so this may have some significance, but only if somebody was anxious to get Lionel out of the way by killing him.
This seems to eliminate Ward from our list of suspects even if he were not dead, since he had told Mrs Kempson that although he had inherited the estate, he could not afford to keep it up and pay the servants, and Mrs Kempson has confirmed this by telling me that it is only because of the fortune left her by her late husband that she herself can afford to go on living at Hill House. Incidentally, she tells me that she was leaving Ward a compensatory sum in her will.
Well, we are left with a most unsatisfactory list of suspects for the murder of Miss Patterson and no suspects whatever for the death of Ward unless (so far as I can see at present) he was an eye-witness when the girl was killed. But who, except the children and, perhaps, their playmates, knew that the hole in the floor so conveniently existed? That, I think, is a most interesting and important point.
I ought to add that Ward, on Mr and Mrs Landgraves' evidence, had not slept at his lodgings for two nights, so the hypothesis that he was a witness of Miss Patterson's murder is hardly tenable, for my own theory is that he was already dead when she was killed, although, of course, he may have murdered her and been slaughtered by somebody out of revenge. My contention at present is that Miss Patterson was mistaken for young Lionel, but then we are faced with a key question. Failing Mr Ward, who had already repudiated his inheritance, to whose advantage would it be to have Lionel out of the way?-and, in any case who would expect a child to be in the open so late at night?
As for the opportunity to murder Merle Patterson, well, Doctor Tassall and the adopted son-I call him
