The Starvel Hollow tragedy

by Freeman Wills Crofts

About Tarkington, the landlord waxed almost lyrical. Tarkington was a white man, straight as a die and no fool neither. He was more than a bank manager. He was, so French gathered, a sort of financial father confessor to the neighbourhood. Every one trusted Tarkington, and took their difficulties to him for help and advice. And Tarkington gave both, in good measure pressed down and shaken together. He did not spare himself, and if he could help a lame dog over a stile, he did it. What Tarkington said went, as far as most things were concerned.

The landlord also approved of Oxley. Oxley would have his joke, if he was to be hung for it the next minute, but he was a very sound man and a good lawyer. If you had Oxley on your side he would make a keen fight for you, and for all his jokes and his breezy manner he wouldn’t give nothing away. Oxley was well liked and he deserved it.

Of the medical profession in Thirsby the landlord was equally ready to impart information. Dr. Emerson was a good doctor and well respected, but he was growing old. He hardly did any work now, but he had made plenty and he could afford to retire. Not that he had been a money-grubber—the landlord had known many a case where he had treated poor patients free—but until Dr. Philpot had come he had the whole of the practice, and he hadn’t done badly with it. The landlord wished that hotel keeping was half as profitable. Well off, Dr. Emerson was.

French next murmured Dr. Philpot’s name, but the landlord spoke with more reserve. He was a clever man, first rate at his job, the landlord believed, though he was thankful to say he hadn’t ever needed to call him in. But he had made some good cures and people that had had him once wouldn’t have anybody else. And he was pleasant spoken and likeable enough, and there was no reason why he shouldn’t have done extra well at Thirsby, for there was an opening for just such a man on account of Dr. Emerson’s age. But—the landlord sank his voice and became more confidential than ever—the truth was he had made a muck of things, and no one would be surprised to see him take down his plate any day. He was all right in every way, but the one—he was a wild gambler. Fair ruining himself, he was. Horses mostly. It was a pity, because he was well liked otherwise. But there you were. The landlord had nothing to say about backing an occasional horse—he did it himself—but, systematic gambling! Well, you know, it could go too far.

French was interested to learn that Sergeant Kent was a fool. The landlord did not put it quite in those words, but he conveyed the idea extraordinarily well. Kent was bumptious and overbearing, and carried away by a sense of his own importance. French, the landlord was afraid, wouldn’t get much help there.

The landlord showed signs of a willingness to go on talking all night, but by the time eleven-thirty had struck on the old grandfather’s clock in the hall French thought he had all the information that was likely to be valuable. He therefore began insinuating the idea of bed, and this gradually penetrating to the other’s consciousness, his flow of conversation diminished and presently they separated.

The next day was Sunday, and after a late breakfast and a leisurely pipe, French asked for some sandwiches, saying he was going out for a long tramp over the moor. Having thus explained himself he strolled off and presently, by a circuitous route, reached the lip of Starvel Hollow.

In spite of the fact that his professional and critical interests were aroused, French could not help feeling impressed by the isolation of the ruins and the morbid, not to say sinister atmosphere which seemed to brood over the entire place. Around him were the wild rolling spaces of the moor, forbidding and desolate, rising here into rounded hills, dropping there into shallow valleys. The colouring was drab, in the foreground the dull greens of rushes and sedgy grass, the browns of heather and at intervals a darker smudge where stone outcropped, on the horizon the hazy blues of distance. Scarcely a tree or a shrub was to be seen in the bare country, and the two or three widely separated cottages, crouching low as if for protection from the winds, seemed only to intensify the loneliness of the outlook.

At French’s feet lay the Hollow, a curious, saucer-like depression in the moor, some quarter of a mile or more across. Its rim looked continuous, the valley through which it was drained being winding and not apparent at first sight. In the centre was the group of pines which had surrounded the old house, stunted, leaning one way from the prevailing wind, melancholy and depressing. Of the walls of the house from this point of view there was no sign.

French walked down toward the ruins, marvelling at the choice which would bring a man of means to such a locality. He could understand now why on that night some five weeks earlier a building of the size of this old house could be burned down without attracting more attention. The Hollow accounted for it. Even flames soaring up from such a conflagration would not surmount the lip of the saucer. Truly a place also, as Tarkington had pointed out, where burglars could work their will unseen and undisturbed.