Timeworn Town

Front matter

Timeworn Town

THE STORY OF THE STRANGE MURDER MYSTERY IN HISTORIC HATHELSBOROUGH

By J. S. Fletcher Author of “The Town of Crooked Ways,” “The Harvest Moon,” etc.

Part I

Timeworn Town

THE STORY OF THE STRANGE MURDER MYSTERY IN HISTORIC HATHELSBOROUGH

By J. S. Fletcher Author of “The Town of Crooked Ways,” “The Harvest Moon,” etc.

IN the middle of the old town of Hathelsborough lies the Market Place—a long, somewhat narrow parallelogram, inclosed on its longer side by old gabled houses, shut in at its western end by the massive bulk of the great parish church of St. Hathelswide, virgin and martyr, and at its eastern by the ancient walls and high roofs of the medieval Moot Hall.

The inner surface of this space is paved with cobblestones, worn smooth by centuries of usage. It is only of late years that the conservative spirit of the old borough has so far accommodated itself to modern requirements as to provide sidewalks in front of the shops and houses; and there that same spirit has stopped. The utilitarian of to-day would sweep away, as being serious hindrances to wheeled traffic, the two picturesque fifteenth-century erections which stand in the Market Place. These two—High Cross and Low Cross, one at the east end, in front of the Moot Hall, the other at the west, facing the chancel of the church—remain, to the delight of the archæologist, as instances of the curious fashion in which our forefathers built gathering places in the very midst of narrow thoroughfares.

Under the graceful cupola and the flying buttresses of High Cross, the country folk still expose for sale on market days their butter and their eggs. Around the base of the slender shaft called Low Cross, they still offer their poultry and rabbits. On other than market days, High Cross and Low Cross alike make central open-air clubs for the patriarchs of the town, who there assemble in the lazy afternoon and still lazier eventide, to gossip over the latest items of local news. These veterans know that as they are doing, so their ancestors did for many a generation before them; and that old as they may be themselves, in their septuagenarian or octogenarian states, they are as infants in comparison with the age of the stones and bricks and timbers about them, gray and fragrant with the antiquity of at least three hundred years.

Of all this mass of venerable material, still sound and uncrumbled, the tall-towered church at one end of the Market Place, and the square, heavily fashioned Moot Hall at the other, go furthest back, through association, into the mists of the Middle Ages. The church dates from the thirteenth century, and though it has been skillfully restored more than once, there is nothing in its cathedral-like proportions that suggests modernity. The Moot Hall, erected a hundred years later, remains precisely as when it was first fashioned, and though it, too, has passed under the hand of the restorer, its renovation has only taken the shape of strengthening an already formidably strong building.

Extending across nearly the whole eastern end of the Market Place, and flanked on one side by an ancient dwelling house—once the official residence of the mayors of Hathelsborough—and on the other by a more modern but still old-world building, long used as a bank, Hathelsborough Moot Hall presents the appearance of a medieval fortress. Its original builders may have meant it to be a possible refuge for the townsfolk against masterful baron or marauding Scot.

From the Market Place there is but one entrance to it—an arched doorway opening upon a low-roofed stone hall. In place of a door there are heavy gates of iron, with a smaller wicket gate set in their midst. From the stone hall a stone stair leads to the various chambers above. In the outer walls the windows are high and narrow, and each is filled with old painted glass.

A strong, grim building, this. When the iron gates are locked, as they are every night when the curfew bell—an ancient institution jealously kept up in Hathelsborough—rings from St. Hathelswide's tower, a man might safely wager his all that only modern artillery could force an entrance to its dark and gloomy interior.

On a certain April evening, the time being within an hour of curfew—which, to be exact, is rung in Hathelsborough every night, all the year round, sixty minutes after sunset, despite the fact that it is nowadays but a meaningless ceremony—Bunning, caretaker and custodian of the Moot Hall, stood outside of its gates, smoking his pipe and looking around him. He was an ex-army man, who had seen service in many parts of the world, and who was frequently heard to declare that although he had set eyes on many men and many cities, he had never found the equal of Hathelsborough folk, nor seen a fairer prospect than that on which he now gazed.

The truth was that Bunning was a Hathelsborough man. Having wandered about a good deal during his military service, from Aldershot to Gibraltar, from Gibraltar to Malta, from Malta to Cairo, from Cairo to Peshawar, he was well-content to settle down in a comfortable berth amid the familiar scenes of his childhood.

Any one who loves the ancient country towns of England would have agreed with Bunning that Hathelsborough Market Place made an unusually attractive picture on a spring evening. There were the old gabled houses, quaintly roofed and timbered; there was the lacelike masonry of High Cross; there were the slender proportions of Low Cross; there was the mighty bulk of the parish church, built over the very spot whereon the virgin saint suffered martyrdom. Finally, towering above the gables on the north side, there was the well preserved masonry of the massive Norman on of Hathelsborough Castle.

To Bunning's right and left, going away from the eastern corner of the Market Place, lay two narrow streets, called respectively River Gate and Meadow Gate. One led downward to the little river on the southern edge of the town; the other ran toward the widespread grass lands that stretched on its northern boundary.

As he stood looking about him, he saw a man turn the corner of Meadow Gate—a man who came hurrying along in his direction, walking sharply, his eyes bent on the flags beneath his feet, his whole attitude that of one in deep reflection. At sight of him Bunning put his pipe in his pocket, gave himself the soldier's shake, and, as the man drew near, stood smartly to attention.

The man looked up. Bunning's right hand went up to his cap in the old familiar fashion. That was how, during many a long year of service, he had saluted his superiors.

II

There was nothing very impressive about the person whom the caretaker greeted with so much punctilious ceremony. He was a little, somewhat insignificant-looking man—at first sight. His clothes were well worn and carelessly put on. The collar of his coat projected high above that of his overcoat. His necktie had slipped around toward one ear. His linen was frayed, and his felt hat, worn anyhow, needed brushing. He wore cotton gloves, too big for him.

He carried a mass of papers and books under one arm; the other hand grasped an umbrella, which had grown green and gray in service. He might have been all sorts of insignificant things—a clerk, going homeward from his work; a taxgatherer, carrying his documents; a rent collector, anxious about a defaulting tenant—almost anything of that sort; but Bunning knew him for Councilor John Wallingford, at that time mayor of Hathelsborough.

Bunning knew something else, too—that Wallingford, in spite of his careless attire and very ordinary appearance, was a remarkable man. He was not a native of the old town. Although he was—for twelve months, at any rate—its first magistrate, and consequently the most important person in the place, Hathelsborough folk still ranked him as a stranger, for he had been among them only about twelve years.

During that time he had made his mark in the town. Coming there as managing clerk to a firm of solicitors, he had eventually qualified as a full-fledged practitioner and had ultimately succeeded to the practice which he had formerly managed for its two elderly partners, now retired. At an early period of his Hathelsborough career he had taken keen and deep interest in the municipal affairs of his adopted town, and had succeeded in getting a seat on the council, where he had quickly made his influence felt. In the previous November he had been elected, by a majority of one vote, to the mayoralty, and had so become the four hundred and eighty-first burgess of the ancient borough to wear the furred mantle and gold chain which symbolized his dignity.

Wallingford looked very different in these official grandeurs to what he did in his everyday attire; but whether in the mayoral robes or in his carelessly worn clothes, any close observer would have seen that he was a sharp, shrewd man, with all his wits about him—a close-seeing, concentrated man, likely to go through, no matter what obstacles rose in his path, with anything that he took in hand.

Bunning was becoming accustomed to these evening visits of the mayor to the Moot Hall. Of late, Wallingford had come there often, going upstairs to the mayor's parlor, and remaining there alone until ten or eleven o'clock. Always he brought books and papers with him. Always, as he entered, he gave the custodian the same command—no one was to disturb him, on any pretext whatever.

On this occasion, however, Bunning heard a different order.

“Oh, Bunning!” said the mayor, as he came up to the iron gates before which the old soldier stood, still at attention. “I shall be in the mayor's parlor for some time to-night, and I'm not to be disturbed, except for this—I'm expecting my cousin, Mr. Brent, from London, this evening, and I left word at my rooms that if he came any time before ten, he was to be sent on here. So, if he comes, show him up to me; but—nobody else, Bunning!”

“Very good, your worship,” replied Bunning. “I'll see to it—Mr. Brent, from London.”

“You've seen him before,” said the mayor. “He was here last Christmas—tall young fellow, clean-shaven. You'll know him.”

Wallingford hurried inside the stone hall and went up the stairs to the upper regions of the gloomy old place. Bunning, after a parting salute, pulled out his pipe and began to smoke again. He was never tired of looking out on the old Market Place. Even in the quietest hours of the evening there was always something going on, something to be seen—trivial things, no doubt, but full of interest to Bunning—men and women coming and going, young people sweethearting, acquaintances passing and repassing. These things were of more importance to his essentially parochial mind than affairs of state.

Presently came along another municipal official, whom Bunning knew as well as he knew the mayor—a man who, indeed, was known all over the town, from the mere fact that he was always attired in a livery the like of which he and his predecessors had been wearing for at least two hundred years. This was Spizey, a consequential person who, in the borough rolls for the time being, was entered as bellman, town crier, and mace bearer.

Spizey was a big, fleshy man, with a large, solemn face, a ponderous manner, and small eyes. His ample figure was habited at all seasons of the year in a voluminous cloak, which had much gold lace on its front and cuffs and many capes about the shoulders. He wore a three-cornered laced hat on his bullet head, and carried a tall staff, not unlike a wand, in his hand.

There were a few—a very few—progressive folk in Hathelsborough who regarded Spizey and his semitheatrical attire as an anachronism, and openly derided both; but so far nobody had dared to advocate the abolition of him and his livery. He was part and parcel of the high tradition, a reminder of the fact that Hathelsborough possessed a charter of incorporation centuries before its neighbor boroughs, now more populous and important, gained theirs.

In the mace bearer's own opinion, the discontinuance of his symbols of office would have been little less serious than the sale of the mayor's purple robe and chain of solid gold. Spizey, thus attired, was Hathelsborough. As he was not slow to remind awe-struck audiences at his favorite tavern, mayors, aldermen, and councilors were, so to speak, creatures of the moment. The mayor, for example, might be “his worship” for twelve months and plain Mr. Chipps, the grocer, ever after; but he, Spizey, was a permanent institution, and not to be moved.

Just now Spizey was on his way to his favorite tavern, to smoke his pipe—which it was beneath his dignity to do in public—and to drink his glass among his cronies. He stopped to exchange the time of day with Bunning, whom he regarded with patronizing condescension, as being a lesser light than himself. Having remarked that this was a fine evening, after the usual fashion of British folk, who are forever wasting time and breath in drawing one another's attention to obvious facts, he cocked one of his small eyes at the stairs behind the iron gates.

“Worship up there?” he asked, transferring his gaze to Bunning.

“Just gone up,” answered Bunning. “Five minutes ago.”

The mace bearer looked up the Market Place, down River Gate, and along Meadow Gate. Having assured himself that there was nobody within fifty yards, he sank his mellow voice to a melodious whisper, and poked Bunning in the ribs with a pudgy forefinger.

“Ah!” he said confidingly. “Just so! Again! Now, as a municipal official—though not, to be sure, of such long standing as mine—what do you make of it?”

“Make of what?' demanded the caretaker of the Moot Hall.

Spizey came still nearer to his companion. He was one of those men who, when disposed to confidential communication, have a trick of getting as close as possible to their victims, and of poking and prodding them. Again he stuck his finger into Bunning's ribs.

“Make of what, says you!” he breathed. “Aye, to be sure! Why, of all this here coming up at night to the Moot Hall, and sitting all alone in that there mayor's parlor, not to be disturbed by nobody, whosomever! What does it all mean?”

“No business of mine,” replied Bunning; “nor of anybody's, but his own—that is, so far as I'm aware of. What about it?”

Spizey removed his three-cornered hat, took a many-colored handkerchief out of it, and wiped his forehead. He was in a state of perpetual warmth, and had a habit of mopping his brow when called on for mental effort.

“Ah!” he said. “That's just it! What about it, do you say? Well, what I say is this here—'tain't in accordance with precedent! Precedent, mark you, which is what a ancient corporation of this sort goes by! Where should we all be if what was done by our fathers before us wasn't done by us? Take me—don't I do what's been done in this here town of Hathelsborough from time immemorial? Well, then!”

“That's just it,” said Bunning. “Well, then! Why shouldn't his worship come here at night and stick up there as long as he likes? What's against it?”

“Precedent!” retorted Spizey. “Ain't never been done before—never. Haven't I been in the office I hold nigh on to forty years? Seen a many mayors, aldermen, and common councilors come and go in my time; but never do I remember a mayor coming here to this Moot Hall of a night, with books and papers—which is dangerous matters at any time, except in their proper place, such as my proclamations and the town dockyments—and sitting there for hours, doing—what?”

Bunning shook his head. He was pulling steadily at his pipe as he listened, and he gazed meditatively at the smoke curling away from it.

“Well?” he said, after a pause. “And what do you make of it? You'll have some idea, I reckon—a man of your importance.”

Once more the mace bearer looked around, and once more applied his forefinger to Bunning's waistline. His voice grew deep with confidence.

“Mischief!” he whispered. “Mischief—that's what I make of it! He's up to something—something what 'll be dangerous to the vested interests in this here ancient borough. Ain't he allus been one o' them Radicals, what wants to pull down everything that's made this here country what it is? Didn't he put in his last election address, when he was a candidate for the council, for the Castle Ward, that he was all for retrenchment and reform? Didn't he say, when he was elected mayor—by a majority of one vote—that he intended to go thoroughly into the financial affairs of the town, and to do away with a lot of expenses which in his opinion wasn't necessary? Oh, I've heard talk! Men in high office, like me, hears a deal. Why, I've heard it said that he's been heard to say, in private, that it was high time to abolish me!”

Bunning's mouth opened a little. He was a man of simple nature, and the picture of Hathelsborough without Spizey and his livery appalled him.

“Bless me!” he exclaimed.

“To be sure!” said Spizey. “It's beyond comprehension! To abolish me, what, in a manner of speaking, has existed I don't know how long! I ain't a man—I'm an office! Who'd cry things that was lost, at that there cross? Who'd pull the big bell on great occasions, and carry round the little un when there was proclamations to be made? Who'd walk in front of the mayor's procession, with the mace, what was give to this here town by King Henry VII his very self? Abolish me? Why, it's as bad as talking about abolishing the Bible!”

“It's the age for that sort of thing,” remarked Bunning. “I seen a deal of it in the army. Abolished all sorts o' things, they have, there. I never seen no good come of it, neither. I'm all for keeping up the good old things. Can't better 'em, in my opinion; and as you say, that there mace of ours—'tis ancient!”

“Nobody but one of these here Radicals and levelers could talk of doing away with such proper institutions,” affirmed Spizey; “but I tell you I've heard of it. He said—you'd scarce believe it—he said there was no need for a town crier, nor a bellman, and as for this mace, it could be carried on Mayor's Day by a policeman! Fancy that, now—our mace carried by a policeman!”

“Dear, dear!” said Bunning. “Don't seem to fit in, that! However,” he added consolingly, “if they did abolish you, you'd no doubt get a handsome pension.”

“Pension!” exclaimed Spizey. “That's a detail. It's the office I'm a considering of. What this here free and ancient borough would look like without me, I cannot think!”

He shook his head and went sadly away.

Bunning, suddenly remembering that it was about his supper time, prepared to retreat into the room which he and his wife shared, at the end of the stone hall. As he entered the gates, a quick, firm footstep sounded behind him, and he turned to see a smart, alert-looking young man approaching. Bunning recognized him as a stranger whom he had seen once or twice before, at intervals, in company with Wallingford. For the third time that night he saluted.

“Looking for the mayor, sir?” he asked, throwing the gate open. “His worship's upstairs. I was to show you up. Mr. Brent, isn't it, sir?”

“Right!” replied the other. “My cousin left word I was to join him here. Whereabouts is he in this old fortress of yours?”

“This way, sir,” said Bunning. “Fortress, you call it, sir, but it's more like a rabbit warren. No end of twists and turns—that is, once you get inside it.”

He preceded Richard Brent up the stone staircase, and along narrow corridors and passages, until he came to a door at which he knocked gently. Receiving no reply, he opened it and went in, motioning Brent to follow; but before Bunning had well crossed the threshold, he started back with a sharp cry. The mayor was there, but he was lying face forward across the desk—lifeless.

III

Bunning knew that the mayor was dead before the cry of surprise had passed his lips. In his time he had seen many dead men. Sometimes it was a bullet, sometimes a bayonet; he knew the signs of what follows on the swift passage of one and the sharp thrust of the other.

In his first glance into the room he had been quick to notice the limp hand hanging across the edge of the desk, and the way in which Wallingford's head lay athwart the mass of papers over which he had collapsed in falling forward from his chair. That meant death; and the old soldier's observant eye had seen more than that. Over the litter of documents which lay around the still figure were great crimson stains.

The caretaker's cry changed to articulate speech:

“Murder! Murder! The mayor's been murdered!”

Brent, a strongly built and active man, pushed by, and made for the desk. He was going to lay a hand on his cousin's shoulder, but Bunning stopped him.

“For God's sake, Mr. Brent, don't touch him!” he exclaimed. “Let him be, sir, till the police—”

He paused, staring around the gloomy, oak-paneled room, from the walls of which the portraits of various dignitaries looked down.

“Who on earth can have done it?” he muttered. “It's—it's not three-quarters of an hour since he came up here.”

“Alone?” asked Brent.

“Alone, sir; and I'll take my solemn oath that nobody was here waiting for him. I'd been in this room myself, not five minutes before he came,” said Bunning. “It was empty.”

Brent disregarded the caretaker's admonition, and laid a finger on the dead man's forehead; but Bunning pointed to a dark stain, still spreading, on the back of the mayor's coat—a well worn garment of gray tweed.

“Look there, sir!” he whispered. “He's been run through the body from behind—right through the heart—as he sat in his chair. Murder!”

“Who should murder him?” demanded Brent.

Bunning made no answer. He was looking about him. There were three doors into the room. He glanced at each, shaking his head after each glance.

“We'd best get the police at once, Mr. Brent,” he said. “The police station's just at the back. There's a way down to it from outside this parlor. I'll run down now. You, sir—”

“I'll stop here,” answered Brent. “But get a doctor, will you? I want to know—”

“Dr. Wellesley, the police surgeon, is next door,” replied Brent. “The police 'll get him. But he's beyond all doctors, Mr. Brent! Instantaneous, that! I know!”

He hurried out of the room, and Brent, left alone with the dead man, looked at him once again, wonderingly. Cousins though they were, he and Wallingford knew little of each other. Their acquaintance, such as it was, had not been close enough to establish any particular affection between them.

Since Wallingford's election as mayor of Hathelsborough, Brent, by profession a journalist in London, had twice spent a week-end with him in the old town, and had learned something of his plans for the reform of certain matters connected with the administration of its affairs. They had discussed these things on the occasion of Brent's last visit, and now, as he stood by the dead man, he remembered certain words which Wallingford had spoken.

“There are things that I can do,” Wallingford had said, with some confidence; “but there are other things—why, it would be literally as much as my life is worth even to try to undermine them!” he had added, with a cynical laugh.

That was now four months ago, but Brent remembered. As he stood there, waiting for help which would be useless, he began to wonder if Wallingford, eager for reform, had attempted anything likely to bring him into personal danger.

Certainly, from all that Brent knew of him, he was the sort of man who, having set himself to a task, would let nothing stop him in accomplishing it. He was the sort of man, too, Brent thought, who had a genius for making enemies. Such men always have. But—murder! Cold-blooded, deliberate, and apparently well planned murder!

Yet there it was, before him. The mayor of Hathelsborough had walked up into that room, sacred to his official uses, and suggestive in its atmosphere and furniture of his great dignity, and had settled down to his desk, only to be assassinated by some enemy who had taken good care to perform his crime with swiftness and thoroughness.

The sound of heavy footsteps on the stairs outside the half open door aroused Brent from these melancholy speculations. He turned to see Bunning coming back, accompanied by several men. Foremost among them was Hawthwaite, superintendent of the borough police, whom Brent had met once or twice on his previous visits to the town.

Hawthwaite, a big, bearded man, was obviously upset, if not actually frightened. His ruddy face had paled under the caretaker's startling news, and he drew his breath sharply as he entered the mayor's parlor and caught sight of the still figure lying across the big desk in the middle of the room.

“God bless my life and soul, Mr. Brent!” he exclaimed in hushed tones, as he tiptoed nearer to the dead and the living. “What's all this? You found the—dead—you and Bunning? Why—why—”

“We found him as you see him,” answered Brent. “He has been murdered—there's no doubt whatever about that, superintendent.”

Hawthwaite bent down fearfully toward the dead man, and then looked round at Bunning.

“When did he come up here?” he asked sharply.

“About three-quarters of an hour before Mr. Brent came, sir,” replied Bunning. “He came up to me as I was standing outside the gates, smoking my pipe, and said that he was going up to the mayor's parlor, and nobody was to be allowed to disturb him; but if his cousin, Mr. Brent, came, he was to be shown up. Mr. Brent came, and I brought him up, and we found his worship as you see.”

“Somebody's been lying in wait for him,” muttered Hawthwaite. “Hid in this room!”

“Nobody here five minutes before he came up, sir,” affirmed Bunning. “I was up here myself. There was nobody in here, and nobody in this part of the building.”

Hawthwaite looked around the room, and Brent looked with him. It was a big room, paneled in old oak to half the height of its walls. Above the paneling hung numerous portraits of past occupants of the mayoral chair, and some old engravings of scenes in the town. A wide, old-fashioned fireplace stood to the right of the massive desk. On either side of the fireplace were recesses, in each of which there was a door. Hawthwaite stepped across to these in turn and tried them. Each was locked from the inside.

He silently pointed to the keys.

“The door to the stairs was open, sir,” remarked Bunning. “I mean, his worship hadn't locked himself in, as I have known him do.”

Hawthwaite nodded. Then he nudged Brent's elbow, looking sidewise at the dead man.

“Been done as he sat writing in his chair,” he muttered. “Look—the pen slipped from his fingers as he fell forward. Queer!”

A policeman came hurrying into the room, but pulled himself up as he saw what was there. His voice instinctively hushed.

“Dr. Wellesley's just gone down Meadow Gate, sir,” he announced. “They've sent for him to come here at once.”

“Useless!” murmured the superintendent. “Still—”

Then the five or six men present stood, silently waiting. Some stared about the room, as if wondering at its secret. Some occasionally took covert glances at its central figure.

One of the three high, narrow windows was open. Brent distinctly heard the murmur of children playing in the streets outside. Suddenly, from the tower of St. Hathelswide, at the other end of the Market Place, curfew began to ring.

“He's coming, sir!” whispered the policeman who stood near the door. “On the stairs, sir!”

Brent turned as Dr. Wellesley came hurrying into the room. The physician, a tall, clean-shaven, fresh-colored man, went straight to the desk, looked at what he found there, and turned quickly on the men grouped around.

“How long is it since he was found?” he asked abruptly.

“Ten or twelve minutes,” answered Brent.

“Was he dead then?”

“Yes,” said Brent. “I should say—of course, I don't speak professionally, but I should think he'd been dead at least half an hour.”

The doctor glanced at the superintendent of police.

“We must have him taken down to the mortuary,” he said. “Let some of you men stay here with me, and send another for my assistant and for Dr. Barber.”

The superintendent gave some orders, and, touching Brent's arm, motioned him to follow outside the room.

“This is a bad business, Mr. Brent,” he said, as they paused at the head of the stair. “It's murder, sir! But how on earth did the murderer get in there? Bunning tells me that he himself was standing outside the iron gates at the entrance to the Moot Hall from the time the mayor entered until you came. He asserts that nobody entered the place by those gates.”

“I suppose there are other means of entrance?” suggested Brent.

“Doubtful if anybody could get in by them at this hour of the evening,” answered the superintendent; “but there are two ways by which it is possible to reach the mayor's parlor. They're both what you might call complicated. Come this way, and I'll show you.”