THE CHINA MAIL FRIDAY SUPPLEMENT, JUNE 25, 1937
MURDER IN A COTTAGE
No
one can have regretted the murder of J. Blaber. He was not the sort of man one re- grets. He was rich, dirty, and illiterate. He was very rich how rich no one knew until his sudden end, when the sum of fifty-nine thousand pounds was discovered in the bread pannikin. The rest, a trifle of thirty thou- sand, was in the bank This money had all been made out of pigs. He did not keep them; he bought and sold them. He also bought and sold old horses.
He lived in a shabby, insani- tary, tumbledown cottage of two rooms at the very gate of Sir Thomas Severn's drive, and when the Income Tax collector called on him with a request for six hundred pounds he produced the amount, in notes, from his pocket, and threw it sulkily on the table. He objected strongly to paying away "money for which he could see no return. When it was re- presented to him that he was, in fact, supporting the British Em- pire, he showed a deplorable in- difference to his privileges. And he could not sign his name.
In addition, he was the most squalid object in Dorset. He had never been washed since his sec- ond birthday, when his mother gave up her perfunctory attempts on him. The windows of his cottage were stuffed with old rags. The outside was unspeak- ably filthy and decayed. Taken together, he and his cottage ruin- ed the entrance to Sir Thomas Severn's majestic house. And there was no way of getting rid of him. He owned the land. which his wretched hovel stood. The hovel had leaned close to the side wall of the lodge since the lodge was built two hundred years ago. The original owner of Severn Hall had not objected, nor had any of his descendants, until it came into the possession of a very distant Severn, to whom Blaber and his hovel were sheer- ly maddening.
on
Sir Thomas was a bachelor, of wide and exquisite culture. He collected glass and Dutch pictures. Under the warmth of his taste and his income the Hall and the gardens flowered into an unfamil- iar loveliness. Only Blaber's hovel marred the pattern.
Sir Thomas tried persuasion,. threats, money. Blaber did not understand the first, and the threats produced a contemptuous chuckle. As for money well,
what could money mean to a man who kept notes in the bread pan- nikin? He didn't want. money. He wanted his two warm, dirty, familiar rooms.
Sir Thomas took to driving through his gates with his face averted. If, drawn by a dreadful fascination, he glanced to the right he was almost sure to see the grotesque, leering face of J. Blaber watching him with an air of furtive amusement. It almost too much for a sensitive. minded man. Sir Thomas began to think of going abroad.
Was
So that though no doubt he was shocked and startled—he was. not very sorry to hear that J Blaber had been found dead in the back room of his cottage, shot through the heart with his own. gun. No one was very sorry. Blaber had no friends. For long time the police - could find that he had any relatives.
In the meantime enquiries were begun into the manner of his death. It was at first assumed that he had shot himself-perhaps by accident-perhaps because he had suddenly seen himself. But the local doctor, after long cogi- tations over the body, walking, crawling, and snuffing round it in a professionally unpleasant way, gave it as his opinion at the in- quest that the wound had not been self-inflicted.
So
someone had murdered
Blaber.. As soon as the news spread he ceased to be the object of mild speculation and became the centre of a positive maelstrom of talk, clues, mystery and terror. They said there was a new Rip- per abroad. They said that the Vicar had been very queer in his manner ever since, at Easter, he was suddenly confronted by Miss Edith Snow in magenta satin and kid boots. They said that Miss Snow herself wasn't herself when she saw a man and J. Blaber was a man, after all. The village
Short Story
let itself go for the first time since Mrs. Iffoliott ran off with the jockey, leaving a note between her husband's teeth in the bath-
room.
A detective came down to as- sist the local police. He put up at the village inn, where the only other guest was a young Mr. Eliot, known to be courting Miss Cather ine Severn, Sir Thomas's niece. Everything else about him was equally well known. He was poor, not liked by Sir
Thomas, Foreign
and he worked in the Office. This last implied that he was some sort of alien himself, probably a spy. The fact that he had sleek black hair, an olive skin, and a languid voice made the last practically certain.
Before the detective had been in the village an hour five persons had come to him independently to say that on the morning of J. Blaber's death they had seen Mr. Eliot walking away from the cottage into the plantation behind. He had seemed vexed or excited, waving his arms and muttering; sobbing, one woman said,
The detective—his name was : Orme, and he had been educated at Rugby and Baliol-was not un- used to the mania of suspicion which hangs like a cloud of flies over most villages. But, in spite of himself, he was impressed by the unanimity of the testimony. Then, when he caught his first glimpse of Michael Eliot, disap- pearing down a shadowy passage in the inn, he recognised him as a man whom he had known a little and disliked a great deal at Ox- ford. In those days Eliot - had been a languid, sinuous young gentleman, given to black cloaks and lilies. He burnt incense in his rooms and wrote peotry in French.
It was all very youthful · and decadent and usual, and Orme ad- mitted to himself that the real reason why he disliked Michael Eliot was probably that Eliot- by whom at first sight he had been unwillingly impressed had seemed bored by him and failed to recognise him when they next met. Reminded, he had
By Storm Jameson
said absently: “Of course, you're the man whoah-reads Gals- worthy. Too refreshing.” Affect- ed ass! After all these years, Orme felt a quiver of wounded vanity and annoyance.
He left the inn and walked to Blaber's cottage. The constable on guard told him that înterest in the scene of the murder was dying down, No one had been near the place for an hour, except that Mr. Eliot, who had walked straight past and rushed into the plantation at the back.
The detective could not imagine Eliot rushing anywhere. He went into the cottage again and look- ed round at the squalid, disorder- ly scene. The murderer, whoever he was, had not found the money in the bread pannikin, but he had evidently looked for it. The mattress was off the bed, the few drawers had been opened and their contents emptied on the floor even the rags of carpet had been torn up.
Orme had just left the cottage and was walking back towards the village when
Ben-hur
footsteps be-
hind him caused him to glance over his shoulder Michael Eliot, swinging his arms and humming approached quickly. As he pas ed he slackened his pace, stared, and finally smiled.
“Hullo, Orme,” he said gently, "still reading our modern mas- ters?"
Orme swallowed his irritation.. "No," he said.
"What are you -doing here?” "Looking for a murderer," Orme said.
Eliot regarded him first with surprise and then with mild amusement. "You're not the Flying Squad, are you?" When Orme had explained he broke in- to spontaneous laughter. "Splen- did!" he cried. “My dear Orme! I always knew you had an original mind. Let's write novels toge- ther. You supply the crude material and I'll add the er literary merit. We shall make a fortune."
Orme, fortunately, had a sense of humour. He grinned amiably and the two walked on together to the inn, where Eliot invited him up to his room for a drink.
"You'd better come to mine," Orme said. “I want to ask you a few questions.”
Eliot's eyebrows flew up. Some- thing of his old languor returned to him as he followed the detec- tive upstairs. He sank gingerly into a chair and looked round the
room.
“The inconceivable squalor of the uninstructed mind,” he said, nodding at a picture on the wall. Orme rather liked the picture, it was a print of Millais,
B
negligible, perhaps, but not vicious. "I'm surprised you stay here,” he said swiftly.
have
I stay here because not yet succeeded in getting my- self invited to the Hall,” Eliot said.
"Do you often stay here?" "Whenever I get leave."
You like the country, I sup pose.
Eliot settled into his chair- “Do let's understand each other, he murmured. “Am - I being
examined?”
Orme hesitated. After all, he thought, the man's a gentleman. He took a chance. "The truth is, my dear Eliot, that you were seen by no fewer than five persons in away from the village coming Blaber's cottage the morning he (Continued on Page 7)
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