J. S. Fletcher

“ Your poor cousin had his party, and there was, to be sure, a party against him and his; but you'll be well aware, sir, as a London gentleman who no doubt often visits Parliament, that here in England men is enemies in politics that's firm friends outside 'em. I believe I may say that that's a fact, sir?”
“Oh, no doubt!” agreed Brent. He was already feeling at a loss, and he scarcely knew what to say next. “I heard, though, that my cousin, as mayor, was proposing such drastic reforms in the of your borough affairs that—well, in short, that personal feeling had arisen.” ”

“ The caretaker's cry changed to articulate speech:
“Murder! Murder! The mayor's been murdered!”
Brent, a strongly built and active man, pushed by, and made for the desk. He was going to lay a hand on his cousin's shoulder, but Bunning stopped him.
“For God's sake, Mr. Brent, don't touch him!” he exclaimed. “Let him be, sir, till the police—”
He paused, staring around the gloomy, oak-paneled room, from the walls of which the portraits of various dignitaries looked down. ”

“ V When Brent came again to the center of the town, he found that Hathelsborough, instead of sinking to sleep within an hour of curfew, according to long established custom, had awakened to new life. There were groups at every corner, and little knots of folk at doors, and men in twos and threes on the sidewalks; and it needed no particular stretching of his ears to inform Brent that everybody was talking of the murder of his cousin. ”

“ He was a man of simple nature, and the picture of Hathelsborough without Spizey and his livery appalled him.
“Bless me!” he exclaimed.
“To be sure!” said Spizey. “It's beyond comprehension! To abolish me, what, in a manner of speaking, has existed I don't know how long! I ain't a man—I'm an office! Who'd cry things that was lost, at that there cross? Who'd pull the big bell on great occasions, and carry round the little un when there was proclamations to be made? Who'd walk in front of the mayor's procession, with the mace, what was give to this here town by King Henry VII his very self? ”

“ Hathelswide's tower, a man might safely wager his all that only modern artillery could force an entrance to its dark and gloomy interior.
On a certain April evening, the time being within an hour of curfew—which, to be exact, is rung in Hathelsborough every night, all the year round, sixty minutes after sunset, despite the fact that it is nowadays but a meaningless ceremony—Bunning, caretaker and custodian of the Moot Hall, stood outside of its gates, smoking his pipe and looking around him. ”

“ Surely they were typical of the reserve, the cunning watchfulness, the suggestive silences of the folk who lived in them—of whom he had just left three excellent specimens in Crood, Mallett, and Coppinger. How was he, a stranger, going to unearth the truth about his cousin's brutal murder, among people like these, endowed, it seemed to him, with an oriental quality of secretiveness? But—he would!
He went on to the rooms in which Wallingford had lived ever since his first coming to the town. They were good, roomy, old-fashioned apartments in a big house, cozy and comfortable ”

“ Brent,” she said at last, “in a little town like this, people will talk. Hathelsborough's a particular bad place for talk and gossip, for all that Hathelsborough people can be as secret as the grave when they like—about their own affairs. As I say, I've heard things, There's a woman comes here to work for me at odd times—a woman that sometimes puts in a day or two at Marriner's Laundry, where a lot of women work, and I recollect her telling me not so long since that there was talk among those women about the mayor and his interfering with things. ”

“ Is she, by any chance, this chap's daughter?”
“Queenie Crood,” said Peppermore. “Pretty girl, too, that, Mr. Brent. No, sir—she's this chap's niece, and Simon's. She's the daughter of another Crood—Ben Crood. Ben's dead—died, I believe, as poor as a church mouse. Simon's the moneyed man of the Crood family. The old rascal rolls in brass, as they call it here. He took Queenie out of charity, and I'll bet my Sunday hat that he gets out of her at least the full equivalent of all that he gives her. Catch him giving anything for nothing!” ”

“ Of course, he was a reformer. Those who didn't like him called him a meddler; and in my experience of this place—ten years—it's a bad thing to meddle in Hathelsborough affairs. Too many vested interests, sir! Certainly, among some people, Mr. Wallingford was not at all popular; but—murder!”
“There are plenty of people who don't stick at murder,” remarked Brent. “But you wanted information. I'll give you some.”
He went on to tell how he and Bunning had found Wallingford, and of the difficulties of access to the mayor's parlor. ”

“ An idea had flashed through his mind as he looked at Krevin Crood in the broken man's brief interchange of remarks with the half insolent tradesman—an idea which he had been careful not to mention to Peppermore. Krevin Crood, said Peppermore, was mainly dependent on his pension of three pounds a week from the borough authorities—a pension which, of course, was terminable at the pleasure of those authorities. Wallingford had let it be known that he was going to advocate the discontinuance of these drains on the town's resources. ”

“ There were a few—a very few—progressive folk in Hathelsborough who regarded Spizey and his semitheatrical attire as an anachronism, and openly derided both; but so far nobody had dared to advocate the abolition of him and his livery. He was part and parcel of the high tradition, a reminder of the fact that Hathelsborough possessed a charter of incorporation centuries before its neighbor boroughs, now more populous and important, gained theirs. ”

“ Brent leaned nearer to him.
“They don't get any change out of him!” whispered Peppermore. “Cool customer, isn't he? Sub judice, eh? Good! And yet, if there's a man in all Hathelsborough that's likely to know what straws are sailing on the undercurrent, Mr. Brent, Krevin Crood's the man. You'll come across him before you're here long. Nobody can be long in Hathelsborough without knowing Krevin!”
They left Bull's then, and after a little talk in the Market Place about the matter of paramount importance, Brent returned to the Chancellor, thinking about what he had just seen and heard. ”

“ Brent. I gather that you're his next of kin? Very well, sir, then you might examine his papers—his private papers and so on. You never know what bit of sidelight you might come upon.”
“Very good,” said Brent; “but I shall want help—a good deal of help—in that. Can you recommend a solicitor?”
“There's Mr. Tansley,” Hawthwaite replied. “His office is next door to his late worship's. A sound man, Tansley, Mr. Brent. If I were you, I should get him to represent you at the inquest to-morrow. Legal assistance is a good thing to have, sir, at an affair of that sort.” ”

“ However, as I say, he once had two thousand a year.”
“A difference,” remarked Brent.
“Aye, well, he adds a bit to his three pounds,” said Peppermore. “He does odd jobs for people. For one thing, he carries out all Dr. Wellesley's medicines for him. He shows strangers around the place. He knows all about the history and antiquities of the castle, St. Hathelswide, the Moot Hall, and so on. A hanger on and a sponge—that's what he is, Mr. Brent; but clever —as clever, sir, as he's unprincipled.” ”

“ There were the old gabled houses, quaintly roofed and timbered; there was the lacelike masonry of High Cross; there were the slender proportions of Low Cross; there was the mighty bulk of the parish church, built over the very spot whereon the virgin saint suffered martyrdom. Finally, towering above the gables on the north side, there was the well preserved masonry of the massive Norman on of Hathelsborough Castle.
To Bunning's right and left, going away from the eastern corner of the Market Place, lay two narrow streets, called respectively River Gate and Meadow Gate. ”

“ Peppermore drew Brent into a vacant alcove and gave him a significant glance.
“I guess there isn't a man in this room, Mr. Brent, that hasn't got his own theory about what happened last night,” he said in a low voice. “I don't suppose any of 'em know you. They're not the sort of men you'd meet when you were here before. These are chiefly tradesmen, betting men, sportsmen, and so on; and, as I say, if you want the gossip of the town, here's the place! There never was a rumor in Hathelsborough but it was known and canvassed and debated and improved upon in Bull's, within an hour. ”

“ The utilitarian of to-day would sweep away, as being serious hindrances to wheeled traffic, the two picturesque fifteenth-century erections which stand in the Market Place. These two—High Cross and Low Cross, one at the east end, in front of the Moot Hall, the other at the west, facing the chancel of the church—remain, to the delight of the archæologist, as instances of the curious fashion in which our forefathers built gathering places in the very midst of narrow thoroughfares. ”

“ Looks like it!”
“I suppose we may get into such things at the inquest,” suggested Brent.
Tansley shrugged his shoulders.
“Perhaps,” he answered. “I've no great faith in inquests, myself; but sometimes things do come out. Our coroner, Seagrave, is a painstaking and thoroughgoing sort of fellow—the leading solicitor in the town, too; but it all depends on what evidence can be brought forward. I always have an uneasy feeling, as regards a coroner's inquiry, that the very people who really could tell something never come forward to do so.” ”

“ Brent recognized him as another of the half-dozen Hathelsborough men whose acquaintance he had made on former visits—Peppermore, the hard-worked editor-reporter of the one local newspaper.
Wallingford had introduced him to Peppermore in the smoking room of the Chancellor Hotel, and Peppermore, who rarely got the chance of talking to London journalists, had been loquacious and ingratiating. His expressive eyebrows—prominent features of his somewhat odd countenance—went up now as he caught sight of Brent standing on the superintendent's hearth rug. He came quickly into the room.
“Mr. Brent!” ”

“ Peppermore was listening to these gruesome details with all the ardor of the born news seeker; but Brent turned away.
“Is there anything I can do?” he asked.
“Why, there isn't,” replied Hawthwaite. “The fact is, there is nothing to do outside our work. The doctors are doing theirs, and there'll have to be an inquest, of course. I've already sent to notify Mr. Seagrave, the coroner. I'm having a thorough search made of the Moot Hall, and I'm ascertaining what his worship did during his last hours. There's nothing more to be done at present. One of my men has gone round to tell his landlady. ”

“ He opened the door of the dock, and led Brent down an iron staircase into an arched and vaulted hall at its foot, whence they proceeded along various gloomy passages toward a heavy, iron-studded door. Near this a police constable stood writing at a tall desk. The superintendent approached and spoke to him. Presently he turned back to Brent.
“Nobody that he doesn't know has been in or out of this place during the whole of the evening,” said Hawthwaite. “He's been on duty there since six o'clock. Nobody has entered, or left, during all that time.” ”

“ The superintendent closed the door, gave him a mysterious glance, and, going over to a cupboard, produced a long, narrow parcel, done up in brown paper.
“A discovery!” he whispered. “It occurred to me this afternoon to have all the heavy furniture in the mayor's parlor examined. No light job, Mr. Brent—but we found this.” ”

“ Hathelsborough folk, sir, are, in my opinion, the queerest lot in all England. If you want to see Alderman Crood, go to the end of the Market Place, turn down Barley Market, and drop a hundred yards or so down the hill at the end. Then you'll smell Crood's tanyard, even if you don't see it. His is the big, solid-looking house at the side—you can't miss it.”
The editor-reporter shot up an alley at his left, at the head of which was a lighted window with black lettering that announced the building as the office of the local newspaper. Brent went on his way to seek the deputy mayor. ”

“ As he stood looking about him, he saw a man turn the corner of Meadow Gate—a man who came hurrying along in his direction, walking sharply, his eyes bent on the flags beneath his feet, his whole attitude that of one in deep reflection. ”

“ I can't think there's anybody in this place would carry their dislikes to that length—murder!”
“You don't know,” said Brent. “At any rate, I'm my cousin's nearest blood relation, and I'm going to find out who killed him, if it's humanly possible. Now who is there in the town who knows most about his public affairs? Who is there, I mean, who's most conversant with whatever it was that he had in hand?”
Hawthwaite seemed to consider matters.
“Well, Alderman Crood, the tanner, is the deputy mayor,” he replied at last. “I should say he's as good a man to go to as anybody, Mr. Brent. ”

“ Saumarez?” asked Brent.
“She's a young widow lady, wealthy, it's understood, who came to live in the town about two years ago,” replied Hawthwaite. “She's a very handsome young woman—you'll be seeing her. Between you and me,” he added, with a knowing glance, “his worship—his late worship, I should say—had been showing her a good deal of attention, and I don't think she was indifferent to him. ”