"Sirit's Churchill, the gardener. Poor fellow! It's awful! He's dead, sir, quite cold. Hehe's been killedmurdered!"
CHAPTER XIII THE BARON
Coming so soon after the robbery at Holt, the brutal murder of Sir Roland's head gardener created an immense sensation throughout both Berkshire and Hampshirefor the Holt Manor estate, though actually in Berkshire, is also upon the border of Hampshire. The London papers, too, devoted much space to the matter, the problem they set their readers to solve being: whether the murder could have any bearing upon the robbery. Some of the leading journals declared that both crimes must have been in some way related; others urged that this was most unlikely, and then proceeded to "prove" the accuracy of their own individual reasoning.
The man had been done to death in a peculiarly horrible manner. He had been hit upon the back of the head with some heavy implementprobably a "jemmy" the police said when the wound, with the wounds upon the forehead, had been examined beneath a microscope. The theory they held was that some person had crept up unheard behind the victimas this could easily have been done with snow so thick upon the groundstunned him with a blow upon the back of the head, and then despatched him outright by blows upon the forehead. No footsteps were anywhere visible, the falling snow having hidden them.
Churchill's movements during that afternoon had in part been traced. Directly after taking to Dulcie the buckle he had found and obtaining her permission to absent himself for the afternoon, he had walked to Holt Stacey, and there caught the 4:05 train to Newbury. He had exchanged the time of day with the ticket-collector at Newbury, who had taken the half of his ticket. The return half had afterwards been found in the dead man's pocket. Where he had been, or what he had done, between 4:20from the time he left Newbury station, on footand 6:10, when he had looked in at the "Dog and Clown" and had a drink and a chat with the landlord, was unknown. He had not told the landlord why he was in Newbury, or said anything concerning his movements in that town.
The fact of his having bought a return ticket showed that he had intended to return to Holt Stacey by train. But he had not gone back by train. The last train for Holt Stacey left Newbury at 9:11, and at 9:30 he had been seen by a seedsman who kept a shop in the town, and who knew Churchill well, standing in the High Street talking to an unknown man he had never seen before. After that, nobody appeared to have seen Churchill untiljust before 10:30, at which time the inn at Holt Stacey closedhe had come into the inn and ordered a hot drink. Nobody was with him then. He appeared, so the innkeeper said, to already have drunk to excess, and this had surprised the innkeeper, who knew him to be a temperate man, adding that that was the first time he had ever seen him even partially intoxicated. Incidentally Churchill had mentioned that "a gentleman had given him a lift from Newbury in his car." He had not said who the gentleman wasif a stranger or somebody he knew, or where he was going. Presumably the man in the car had branched off at Holt Staceyfor he had not put up there for the night. Had he been going on past Holt Manor he would, it was reasonable to suppose, have taken Churchill all the way, and dropped him at the gate.
Soon after 10:30 Churchill had left the inn, saying that he was about to walk home to Holt Manor, a distance of four miles. That was the last time he was known to have been seen alive. It was snowing when he set out.
Poor Dulcie was terribly cut up. I had always known her to be very partial to the old gardener, who remembered her as a baby, but until after his death I had not realized how deeply attached to him she really had been. What most distressed me was that she blamed herself, indirectly, for what had happened. Again and again did she declare to me that, had she not given him leave to take the afternoon off the tragedy would not have happened. In vain I tried to make her see the fallacy of her argumentshe would not listen to reason.