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The Dew of Their Youth, a novel by S. R. Crockett |
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Part 3 - Chapter 22. Boyd Connoway's Evidence |
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_ PART III CHAPTER XXII. BOYD CONNOWAY'S EVIDENCE The loop of the riding-whip on Mr. Richard's wrist was broken, and behind his ear there was a lump the size of a small hen's egg. There were no signs of a struggle. The two men had been sitting face to face, eye to eye, when by a movement which must have been swift as lightning, one had disarmed and smitten the other. Tom, Eben and Rob armed themselves and went out. But the branches of Marnhoul wood stood up against the sky, black, serried and silent. The fields beneath spread empty and grey. The sough of the wind and the fleeing cloud of night was all they saw or heard. They were soon within the house again, happy to be there and the door barred stoutly upon them. Except for little Louis, who was already in bed on the other side of the house where his chamber was, and so knew nothing of the occurrence till the morning, there was no sleep for any that night at Heathknowes. At the first clear break of day Tom and Eben took the cart-horses and rode over to tell Dr. Gillespie, General Johnstone, and Mr. Shepstone Oglethorpe, who were all Justices of the Peace, of what had happened. They came, the General the most imposing, with a great army cloak and a star showing beneath the collar. In the little detached sitting-room, which till the coming of the Maitlands had been used as a cheese-room, Mr. Richard Poole sat, as he had been found, his head still bowed upon his arms, but on his face, when they raised it to look, there was an absolute terror, so that even the General, who had seen many a day of battle, was glad to lay it down again. They took such testimony as was to be had, which was but little, and all tending to one startling conclusion. Suddenly, swiftly, noiselessly, within hearing of eight or nine people, in a defensible house, with arms at hand, Mr. Richard Poole, of the firm of Smart, Poole and Smart, had been done to death. Yet he had known something, though perhaps not the full extent of his danger. We recalled his silences, his moodiness as he approached the farm--the manner in which he had at once put aside all claims, even on a market Wednesday, that he might ride and speak with a man who, if he were not a felon, was certainly no honourable acquaintance for such as Mr. Richard. The three gentlemen looked at each other and took snuff from the Doctor's gold box. "Very serious, sir!" said Mr. Shepstone tentatively. For indeed he had not many ideas--a fact which the others charitably put down to his being an Episcopalian. Really he wanted to find out what they thought before committing himself. "Tempestuous Theophilus!" cried the General, who in the presence of the Doctor always swore by unknown saints--to relieve himself, as was thought--"but 'tis more serious than you think. A fellow like this alive, at large, in our parish----" "In my parish----" corrected the Doctor, who was the only man alive with a legal right to speak of Eden Valley parish as his own. About noon the Fiscal, responsible law officer of the Crown, arrived from Kirkcudbright escorted by Tom and Eben. The evidence was all heard over again, the chamber--ex-cheese room, present parlour--again inspected, but nothing further appeared likely to be discovered, when a shadow fell across the threshold. For some time, indeed, I had sat quaking in my corner, all cold with the fear of a flitting figure, appearing here and there, seen with the tail of the eye, and then disappearing like the black cat I see in corners when my eyes are overstrained with Greek. Of course I thought at once of the murderer Wringham Pollixfen lurking catlike among the office-houses in the hope of striking again, perhaps at Miss Irma--perhaps, also, as I now see, at Sir Louis. But indeed I never thought of him, at least not at the time. It was not the pretended Poole, however. It was a presence as quick, as agile, but more perfectly acquainted with the hidie-holes of the farmyard--in fact, Boyd Connoway. Long before the others I got my eyes on him, and with the joy of a boy when a visitor enters the school at the dreariest hour of lessons, I rushed after him. To my surprise he went round the angle of the barn like a shot. But I had played at that game before. I took one flying leap into the little orchard from the window of the parlour which had been given up to the Maitlands, Louis and Miss Irma. Then I glided among the trees, choosing those I knew would hide me, and leaped on Master Boyd from behind as he was craning his neck to peer round the corner in the direction of the house door. To my utter amaze he dropped to the ground with a throttled kind of cry as if some one had smitten him unawares. Here was surely something that I did not understand. "Boyd, Boyd," I said in his ear, for I began to grow a little concerned myself--not terrified, you know, only anxious--"Boyd, it is only Duncan--Duncan MacAlpine from the school-house." He turned a white, bewildered face to me, cold sweats pearling it, and his jaw worked in spasms. "Oh yes," he muttered, "Agnes Anne's brother!" Now I did not see the use of dragging Agnes Anne continually into everything. Also I was one of the boys who had gone with Boyd Connoway oftenest to the fishing in Loch-in-Breck, and he need not have been afraid of me. But I think that he was a little unsettled by fear. He did not explain, however, only bidding me shudderingly, "not to come at him that way again!" So I promised I would not, all the more readily that I heard him muttering to himself, "I thought he had me that time--yes, sure!" Then I knew that he too was afraid of the man who called himself Wringham Pollixfen Poole and had killed the real Mr. Richard in our old cheese-room. But I was not a bit afraid, for had I not jumped through the orchard window, and run and clapped my hand on his shoulder without a thought of the creature ever crossing my mind. At any rate I took him in with me--that is, Boyd Connoway. I cannot say that he wanted very much to go "before them Justices," as he said. But at least he preferred it to stopping outside. I think he was frightened of my coming out again and slapping down my hand on his shoulder. Lord knows he need not have been, for I promised not to. At any rate he came, which was the main thing. He did not enjoy the ceremony, but stood before them with his blue coat with the large rolling collar, which had been made for a bigger man, buttoned about his waist, and his rig-and-furrow stockings of green, with home-made shoes called "brogues," the secret of making which he had brought with him from a place called Killybegs in County Donegal. He was all tashed with bits of straw and moss clinging to him. His knees too were wet where he had knelt in the marsh, and there was a kind of white shaking terror about the man that impressed every one. For Boyd Connoway had ever been the gayest and most reckless fellow in the parish. When he was asked if he knew anything about the matter he only stammered, "Thank you kindly, Doctor, and you, General, and hoping that I have the honour of seein' you in good health, and that all is well with you at home and your good ladies and the childer!" The General, who thought that he spoke in a mood of mockery, cautioned him that they were met there on a business of life and death, and were in no mood to be trifled with. Therefore, he, Boyd Connoway, had better keep his foolery for another time! But the Doctor, being by his profession accustomed to diagnose the moods of souls, discerned the laboured pant of one who has been breathed by a long run from mortal terror--who has, as my father would have said, "ridden a race with Black Care clinging to the crupper"--and took Boyd in hand with better results. He agreed to tell all he knew, on being promised full and certain protection. And it was something like this that he told his story, as it proved the only direct evidence in the case, at least for many and many a day. "Doctor dear," he began, "ye are a married man yourself, and you will not be misunderstanding me when I ask that anything I may say shall not be used against me?" The Fiscal looked up quickly. "I warn you that it will," he said, "if you have had any hand in this murder!" "Murder, is it?"--(Boyd Connoway gave a short grunting laugh)--"Aye, maybe, but 'tis not the murder that has been, but the murder that will be, if my wife Bridget gets wind of this! That's why I ask that it should be kept between ourselves--so that Bridget should not know!" "Women," said the Fiscal oracularly, "must not be allowed to interfere with the evenhanded and fearless administration of justice." "Then I take it," said Boyd, with a twinkle of the old mirth flickering up into his white and anxious face, "that your honour is not a married man!" "No," said the Fiscal, with a smile. "Then, if I may make so bould, your honour knows nothing about how it is 'twixt Bridget and me. His riverence the Doctor now----" "Tell us what you know without digressions," said the Fiscal; "no use will be made of your evidence save in pursuing and bringing to justice the criminal." "He's gone," said Boyd Connoway solemnly, "and a good riddance to the parish!" "Wha-a-at?" cried the three magistrates simultaneously. And the Fiscal started to his feet. "Who has gone?" he cried, and mechanically he drew from his pocket a silver call to summon his constables from the kitchen, where my uncles and they were having as riotous a time as they dared while so many great folk sat pow-wowing in the parlour near at hand. "Who?" repeated Boyd Connoway, "well, I don't know for certain, but perhaps this little piece of paper will put you gentlemen on the track." And he handed over a letter, much stained with sea-water and sand. The heel of a boot had trodden upon and partly obliterated the writing, the ink having run, and the whole appearance of the document being somewhat draggle-tailed. But there was no doubt about the address. That was clearly written in a fine flowing English hand, "To His Excellency Lalor Maitland, late Governor of the Meuse, Constable of Dinant, etc., etc. These"-- We all looked at each other, and the Fiscal began to doubt whether the new evidence as to the suspected murderer would prove so valuable after all. "Your Excellency" (the letter ran), "according to the promise made to you, the lugger Bloomendahl, of Walchern, Captain Vandam, has been cleared of cargo and is exclusively reserved for your Excellency's use. It will be well, therefore, to dispatch your remaining business in Scotland, as it is impossible to send back the Golden Hind or a vessel of similar size without causing remark. At the old place, then, a little after midnight of Thursday the 18th, a boat will be waiting for you at the eastern port or the western of Portowarren according to the wind. The tide is full about one." "How came you by this?" the Fiscal demanded. "Shall I tell ye in bits, sorr?" said Boyd, "or will ye have her from the beginning?" "From the beginning," said the Fiscal, "only with as few digressions as possible." "Sure," said Boyd innocently, "I got none o' them about me. Your honour can saarch me if ye like!" "The Fiscal means," said the Doctor, "that you are to tell him the story as straightly and as briefly as possible." "Straightly, aye, that I will," said Boyd, "there was never a crooked word came out of my mouth; but briefly, that's beyond any Irishman's power--least of all if he comes from County Donegal!" "Go on!" cried the Fiscal impatiently. "As all things do in our house, it began with Bridget," said Boyd Connoway; "ye see, sorr, she took in a man with a wound--powerful sick he was. The night after the 'dust-up' at the Big House was the time, and she nursed him and she cured him, the craitur. But, whatever the better Bridget was, all that I got for it was that I had to go to Portowarren at dead of night, and that letter flung at me like a bone to a dog, when I told him that I might be called in question for the matter of my wife." "'Aye, put it on your wife,' says he, 'they will let you off. You have not the pluck of a half-drowned flea!' "But when I insisted that I should have wherewith to clear me and Bridget also, he cast the letter down, dibbling it into the pebbles and sand with his heel just as he was going aboard. "'There,' he cried, 'now you can put it on me!'" "Lalor Maitland," said the Fiscal, ruminating, with his brow knit at the letter in his hand. "Where is that maid? Bring her here!" I sprang away at once to knock on Irma's door, and bid her come, because the great folk were wanting her. And it seemed as if she had been expecting the summons too, for she was sitting ready close by little Louis. She cast a white shawl about her shoulders, crossed the kitchen and so into the room where the four gentlemen were sitting about the table--the Fiscal with his papers at the end, and behind the curtains drawn close about the press-bed where lay that which it was not good for young eyes to see. "Miss Maitland, will you describe to us your cousin, Lalor Maitland, of whom you have already spoken to me?" It was the Doctor who took her hand, while on the other side Boyd Connoway in his flapping clothes of antique pattern with brass buttons stood waiting his turn. Irma took one look about which I intercepted. And I think my nod together with the presence of my grandmother gave her courage, for she answered-- "Lalor Maitland? What has he to do with us? He shall not have us. We would kill ourselves if we could not run away. You would never think of giving us up to him----?" "Never while I am alive!" cried my grandmother, but Dr. Gillespie signed to her to be silent. "Will you describe him to us?" suggested the Doctor suavely, "what sort of a man, dark or fair, stout or spare, how he carries himself, what he came over to this country for, and where he is likely to have gone, if we find that he has left it?" Irma thought a moment and then said, "Perhaps I shall not be quite just because I hated him so. But he was a man whom most call handsome, though to me there was always something dreadful about his face. His hair was dark brown mixed with grey. His features were cut like those of a statue, and his head small for his height. He was slender, light on his feet, and walked silently--ugh--yes, like a cat." The Fiscal looked an interrogation at Boyd Connoway. "That is the man," he answered unhesitatingly, "though most of the time while he stayed with Bridget and me he kept his bed. Only from the way he got along the cliff by Portowarren, I judge he was only keeping out of sight and by no means so weak with his wound as he would have had us believe." "And tell us what you saw of him yesterday, Wednesday?" It was the Fiscal who asked the question, but I think all of us held our breaths to catch Boyd Connoway's answer. He shook his head with a disconcerted air like a boy who is set too hard a problem. "I was from home most of the day, and when I came in, with a hunger sharp-set with half-a-dozen hours struggling with the wind, Bridget bade me be off at once to the Dutchman's Howff, which is in Colvend, just where the Boreland march dyke comes down to the edge of the cliff. I was to wait there on the edge of the heugh till one came and called me by name. When I complained of hunger, she put some dry bread into my hand, crying out that I might seek meat where I had worked my work. "I saw that the 'ben' room was empty, and the blankets thrown over the three chair backs. But when I asked where the sick man was, Bridget stamped her foot and bade me attend to my business and she would take care of hers. But Jerry, my oldest boy, had a word with me before I left for the march dyke. He told me that the man 'down-the-house' had gone that morning as soon as my back was turned, after paying his mother in gold sovereigns, which she had immediately hidden. "So I went and waited by the Boreland march dyke--a wild place where even the heather is laid flat by the wind. The gulls and corbies were calling down the cliff, and at the foot the sea was roaring through a narrow gully and spreading out fan-shaped along the sands of the Dutchman's Howff. "I waited long, having nought to eat except the sheaf of loaf bread I gat with such an ill grace from Bridget, and at the end I was beginning to lose patience, when from the other side of the gully I heard a crying and a voice bade me follow the dyke upwards and stand by to help. "So upon the top of the wall I got, and there beneath me was the man I had last seen lying in Bridget's best bed, cossetted and cared for as if he were a prince. But for all that he was short and angry, bidding me dispatch and help him or he would lose his tide." "And did he wear the same clothes as when last you saw him?" said Shepstone Oglethorpe, with a shrewd air. At which Boyd Connoway laughed for the first time since he had come into the presence of his betters. "No," he said, "for the last time I saw him he was under the sheets with one of my sarks on, and Bridget's best linen sheet tied in ribbons about his head." "And how, then, was he dressed?" said the Fiscal, with a glance of scorn at Shepstone. "Oh," answered Boyd Connoway, "just like you or me. I took no particular notice. More than that, it was an ill time for seeing patterns, being nigh on to pit mirk. He bade me lead the way. And this, to the best of my knowledge and ability, I did. But the track is not canny even in the broad of the day. Mickle worse is it when the light of the stars and the glimmer o' the sea three hunder feet below are all that ye hae to guide ye! But the man that had been hidden in our 'ben' room was aye for going on faster and faster. He stopped only to look down now and then for a riding light of some boat. And I made so bold, seeing him that anxious, as to tell him that if it were a canny cargo for the Co'en lads, waiting to be run into Portowarren, never a glim would he see." "'You trust a man that kens,' I said to him, 'never a skarrow will wink, nor a lantern swing. The Isle o' Man chaps and the Dutchmen out yonder have their business better at their fingers' ends than that. But I will tell ye what ye may hear when we get down the hill by the joiner's shop--and that's the clink o' the saddle irons, and the waff o' their horses' lugs as they shake their necks--them no liking their heads tied up in bags.' "'Get on,' he said, 'I wish your head were tied up in a bag!' And he tugged at my tail-coat like to rive it off me, your honour. 'Set me on the shore there at Portowarren before the hour of two, or maybe ye will get something for your guerdon ye will like but ill.' "This was but indifferent talk to a man whose bread you have been eating (it is mostly porridge and saps, but no matter) for weeks and weeks! "We climbed down by the steep road over the rocks--the same that Will of the Cloak Moss and Muckle Sandy o' Auchenhay once held for two hours again the gaugers, till the loaded boats got off clear again into deep water. And when we had tramped down through the round stones that were so hard on the feet after the heather, we came to the edge of the sea water. There it is deep right in. For the tide never leaves Portowarren--no, not the shot of a pebble thrown by the hand. Bending low I could see something like the sail of a ship rise black against the paler edge of the sea. "Then it was that I asked the man for something that might clear me if I was held in suspicion for this night's work--as also my wife Bridget. "After at first denying me with oaths and curses, he threw down this bit paper that I have communicated to your worship, and in a pet trampled it into the pebbles among which the sea was churning and lappering. He pushed off into the boat, sending it out by his weight. "'There,' he cried back, 'let them make what they will of that if ye be called in question. And, hear ye, Boyd Connoway, this I do for the sake of that hard-working woman, your wife, and not for you, that are but a careless, idle good-for-nothing!'" "Deil or man," broke in my grandmother, who thought she had kept silence long enough, "never was a truer word spoken!" Boyd Connoway looked pathetically about. He seemed to implore some one to stand up in his defence. I would have liked to do it, because of his kindness to me, but dared not before such an assembly and on so solemn an occasion. "I put it to the honourable gentlemen now assembled," said Boyd Connoway, "if a man can rightly be called a lazy good-for-nothing when he rose at four of the morning to cut his wife's firewood----" "Should have done it the night before," interrupted my grandmother. "And was at Urr kirkyard at ten to help dig a grave, handed the service of cake and wine at twelve, rung the bell, covered in the corp, and sodded him down as snug as you, Mr. Fiscal, will sleep in your bed this night----!" "That will do," said the Fiscal, who thought Boyd Connoway had had quite enough rope. "Tell us what happened after that--and briefly, as I said before." "Why, I went over to Widow McVinnie's to milk her cow. It calved only last Wednesday, and I am fond of 'beesten cheese.' Besides, the scripture says, 'Help the widows in their afflictions'--or words to that effect." "After this man Lalor Maitland had got into the boat, what happened?" The Fiscal spoke sharply. He thought he was being played with, when, in fact, Boyd was only letting his tongue run on naturally. "Nothing at all, your honour," said Boyd promptly. "The men in the boat just set their oars to the work and were round the corner in a jiffey. I ran to the point by the narrow square opening into the soft sandstone rock, and lying low on my face I could see a lugger close in under the heugh of Boreland, where she would never have dared to go, save that the wind was off shore and steady. But after the noise of the oars in the rowlocks died away I heard no more, and look as I would, I never saw the lugger slip out of the deep shadow of the heughs. So, there being nothing further to be done, I filled my pockets with the dulse that grows there, thin and sweet. For nowhere along the Solway shore does one get the right purple colour and the clean taste of the dulse as in that of Portowarren, towards the right-hand nook as you stand looking up the brae face." Having tendered this very precise indication to whom it might concern, Boyd bowed to the company and took his leave. * * * * * The Fiscal was for holding him in ward lest he should escape, being such a principal witness. But the three Justices knew well that there was no danger of this, and indeed all of them expressed their willingness to go bail for the appearance of Boyd Connoway whenever he should be wanted. "And a great many times when he is not!" added my grandmother, with tart frankness. _ |
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