The Mystery of the Downs

by John R. Watson; Arthur J. Rees

“You are just in time,” continued Inspector Payne. “Gillett and I have been here only a few minutes. We were just going upstairs to look at the body when you arrived.”

On their way upstairs Gillett drew attention to some marks on the margin of the stairs between the carpet on the staircase and the wall. These marks were irregular in shape, and they looked as if they had been made by wiping portions of the stairs with a dirty wet cloth. Some of the stairs bore no mark.

“It seems to me that some one has been wiping up spots of blood on the stairs,” said Inspector Payne, as he examined the marks closely.

On the linoleum covering the landing of the first flight there were more traces of the kind, the last of them being beside the door of the room in which the body had been discovered.

The dead man was still in the arm-chair near the window. There was such a resemblance to life in his stooping posture that the men entering the room found it difficult at first to realize they were confronted with the corpse of a man who had been murdered. A ray of sunlight fell through the narrow window on the bent head, revealing the curly brown hair and the youthful contour of the neck. The right arm was slightly extended from the body towards the table near the arm-chair in which the corpse was seated, as though the murdered man had been about to pick up the pocket-book which lay on the table. The pocket-book was open, and the papers which had been in it were scattered about the table.

Payne, Gillett and Crewe inspected the body closely. Sir George Granville and Marsland waited a little distance away while the others conducted their examination. The dead man had been fully dressed when he was shot. On the left side of his vest was the hole made by the bullet, and around it was a discoloured patch where the blood, oozing from the wound, had stained the tweed. There were numerous blood-stains on the floor near the dead man’s feet, and also near the window at the side of the arm-chair.

“I see that the window is broken,” said Inspector Payne, pointing to one of the panes in the window near the arm-chair.

“By a bullet,” said Sergeant Westaway. He pulled down the window blind and pointed to a hole in it which had evidently been made by a bullet. “When I came in the blind was down. I pulled it up in order to let in some light. But the fact that there is a hole in the window blind shows that the murder was committed at night, when the blind was down. I should say two shots were fired. The first went through the window, and the other killed him.”

“I think the bullet that killed him has gone through him,” said Crewe, who had moved the body in order to examine the back of it. “It looks as if he was shot from behind, because the wound in the back is lower down than the one in front.” He pointed to a hole in the back of the coat where the cloth showed a similar discoloured patch to the one in the vest.

“It must have been a powerful weapon if the bullet has gone through him,” said Gillett. “That means we shall have no bullet to guide us as to the calibre of the weapon, unless we can find the one that went through the window.”