The Mammoth Book of Perfect Crimes and Impossible Mysteries

“Remembering that, I asked for records to be searched. The answer is, that ball was cast to be shot out of only two particular types of weapons. It’s of a size that’s quite obsolete to-day. Either it could have been shot from a long gun, registered in London by Adolph Levoisier, of Strasbourg, in 1826, or out of a duelling pistol fashioned by Gregory Gannion, a gunsmith who had an establishment in Pall Mall between the years 1702 and 1754.

“The exact date of Gannion’s application for a licence to put on the market a weapon of a new type and calibre which he called ‘an excellently powerful small-arm, for the practise of the duel, or in other uses, for delicacy and swiftness of discharge in defence or offence’… was February the ninth, 1709. And, according to all accounts, the bloodthirsty young bucks of that day went daffy about it. Y’see, it was the first ‘hair- trigger’ pistol on the market: ugly, but useful.

“I’m working up from that. I’ve a shrewd idea that good English lead wouldn’t come out of a continental long- gun. No, a Gannion duelling pistol seems indicated.”

I am getting ever more used to Barnabas Hildreth’s tortuous tricks. The queerly precise ordination of those words, “good English lead”, made me curious.

“How does one determine the nationality of-er-lead?” I suavely asked.

“All as easily as one differentiates between a Chinaman and a Zulu,” he sourly grinned. “All as simply as one distinguishes Cleveland iron-ore from Castillian heematite; Poldruinn copper from Norwegian; Aberdeen granite from that of Messina – by looking at it first of all, ass, and studying it afterwards.

“According to the assay-notes, furnished me this morning, the lead from which that ball was cast came from one particular area of Derbyshire, and nowhere else! What’s more, it’s almost pure native stuff” – his face shone with some inner ecstatic light – “and, as it chances, so absolutely unique… that it’s worth its weight, and more, in gold. In fact, if the fervours and excitements of the metallurgical chemists are anything to go by – and they’re simply frazzling over it – it’s the clue to a pretty fat fortune for someone!”

He got up then, and growling something about my hospitality and his thirst, calmly stalked across to my tantalus and mixed whisky and sodas. Then he challenged me across the brim of his glass.

“Well, old man, all the best! And here’s to the speedy solution of one of the neatest mysteries I’ve struck for months.”

So far as I recollect, it was two days later that Hildreth descended on me. He wanted me to go to Thornton Heath with him, and I went. We visited the premises occupied by Westmacott’s brother Ralph – Westmacott and Company, Ltd.: “Antique Furniture Restored, Renovated, Repaired and Reproduced” – reproduced mainly, if my layman’s eye had any common sense behind it.

Admittedly, Ralph Westmacott had certain specimen pieces in his workshops. These were the magnificent possessions of connoisseurs, to whom the factor of financial worth hardly counted. They were all undergoing tiny but incredibly painstaking forms of restoration, and guarded jealously for the treasures they were.

However, as Hildreth said, these were not our meat. Westmacott took us to the larger, general workshop. Here we saw really valuable, but ordinary, examples of olden furniture in the processes of repair and “faking”.

“We pride ourselves,” Westmacott told us, “on our ability to replace a faulty participle with a sound one, so meticulously reproduced and fitted – grafted on, one might say – that no one outside first-flight experts can detect the addition.”

“That, of course, necessitates,” smoothly came Hildreth’s question, “your carrying an amazing stock of old cabinet-making woods, I presume?”

Westmacott looked curiously at my friend.

“Aye, amazing is the word,” he laughed. “Come and have a look in here!”

He preceded us to a vast loft that was filled by racks and shelving – and all of them packed with broken parts of old-fashioned furniture.

“Here you are,” he exulted, “from Tudor to Early Victorian; from linenfold panelling to pollard-oak sideboard doors… gathered together from the auction rooms of half the globe. We couldn’t carry on a day without ’em. Unless similar old stuff is used on replacement jobs-”

“Stuff like this, for instance,” Hildreth interrupted to point at a great stack of dirty wood, looking to me like huge half-cylinders of amber-flecked bog oak: split tree trunks. “This lot seems to be pretty ancient.”

Ralph Westmacott moved delicately to Hildreth’s side.

“Aye,” he concurred, “it’s old enough! That wood’s been buried in the earth for a century and more.”

Brightly, blandly, almost with the alert cockiness of a schoolboy, Barnabas Hildreth replied:

“I don’t doubt that for a moment, Mr Westmacott! They’re elm-wood water conduits, aren’t they? And, judging from their boggish appearance, they’ve come out of moorland or country where there’s plenty of peat about.”

Ralph Westmacott scratched his grizzled hair.

“Yes, they are conduits, and they certainly came out of peaty loam – from Derbyshire, as a matter of fact. We’ve men on the job up there now. They came from Ravensham Park, near a place called Battersby Brow… we bought the whole line of wooden water-pipes that used to serve the hall and the village. Finest tackle in the world for reproduction purposes.”

Grimly enough Hildreth chuckled.

“What a game it is!” he drily stated. “Now, ‘Battersby Brow,’ in Derbyshire” – he was jotting down these particulars in a notebook – “and ‘Ravensham Park,’ you say?”

“Yes, that’s all correct.” Westmacott seemed puzzled.

“And this hall you mentioned? What d’you call it?”

“Ravensham Hall, the residence of General Sir Arthur Koffard, you know.”

Hildreth put away his book and began to fumble among the blackened elm-wood. He pointed to one or two big fragments which lay about.

“Might I have a chunk to take away with me?” he inquired. “I want it for certain experiments that have to be made.” Westmacott nodded. “And will you ratify this? Certain lumps of this wood that you knew would be useless for your work you gave to your brother Henry, didn’t you?”

“I – I did! What’s the-”

“That’s right! I thought I recognised the stuff again. I saw some in his wood-shed.” Hildreth smiled. “Thanks!”

With that we went away and back to London.

From the “Black Bull,” at Battersby Brow in Derbyshire, a letter came to me on the twenty-ninth of October:

My dear Ingram,

If you can leave your mouldy rag to look after itself for the weekend, come over here and be interested. Of all the intricate bits of work I’ve ever struck, this is the trickiest! Don’t let me down, old chap. I promise you a really noble denouement for the mystery of the Westmacott bullet: an ending that, I suppose, you’ll stick on one of your scandalous chronicles of my cases and complacently claim as your own.

Sincerely,

B.H.

So I set out for Battersby Brow and the “Black Bull” as soon as I put my paper to bed in the early hours of Friday, the thirty-first. At nine o’clock the next morning I was in a beautiful and brilliant country of whistling airs and mighty hills.

Over breakfast, Barnabas crowed mightily.

“Done a lot of work since I saw you, old man! Only one tiny coping-stone to be put on, and the job’s complete.

“It was a Gannion duelling pistol that fired that ball. I’ve seen it. There’s a pair of ’em, and they’ve been laid away in a case since seventeen hundred and ten… One was discharged. The other was loaded, but I got permission to draw the charge. I drew it right enough!” He chuckled. “D’you know, it was a curious experience. There I had in hand another ball, similar to the one that wounded Westmacott. And there were tiny tattered fragments of a newspaper that had been used for a wad between bullet and powder – an issue of the Northern Intelligencer for August the first, seventeen-ten.

“The Koffards of Ravensham Hall have been awfully decent about everything. At first they were inclined to be stand-offish, but when I told old General Koffard the story you know, he tucked into things like a good ‘un.”

“Sorry to butt in, Barnabas – but, tell me, what story do I know? It occurs to me that