The Complete Works of Arthur Morrison (Illustrated). Arthur Morrison

      “Divil of a watch in the company, sor. I made an internal calculation. ‘Tis foive mile from Cullanin, and we never lift till near half an hour after the Town Hall clock had struck twelve. ‘Twould take us two hours and a thrifle more, considherin’ the pigs, an’ the rough road, an’ the distance, an’ an’ the thrifle of dhrink.” His eye rolled slyly as he said it. “That was my calculation, sor.”

      Here the constable appeared with two more men. Each had the usual number of eyes, but in other respects they were very good copies of Mr. Shanahan. They were both ragged, and neither bore any violent likeness to a teetotaler. “Dan Mulcahy and Dennis Grady,” announced the constable.

      Mr. Dan Mulcahy’s tale was of a piece with Mr. Larry Shanahan’s, and Mr. Dennis Grady’s was the same. They had all heard the shot it was plain. What Dan had said to Dennis and what Dennis had said to Larry mattered little. Also they were all agreed that the day was Tuesday by token of the fair. But as to the time of day there arose a disagreement.

      “‘Twas nigh soon afther wan o’clock,” said Dan Mulcahy.

      “Soon afther wan!” exclaimed Larry Shanahan with scorn. “Soon afther your grandmother’s pig! ‘Twas half afther two at laste. Ut sthruck twelve nigh half an hour before we lift Cullanin. Why, yez heard ut!”

      “That I did not. Ut sthruck eleven, an’ we wint in foive minutes.”

      “What fool-talk ye shpake Dan Mulcahy. ‘Twas twelve sthruck; I counted ut.”

      “Thin ye counted wrong. I counted ut, an’ ‘twas elivin.”

      “Yez nayther av yez right,” interposed Dennis Grady. “‘Twas not elivin when we lift; ‘twas not, be the mother av Moses!”

      “I wondher at ye, Dennis Grady; ye must have been dhrunk as a Kerry cow,” and both Mulcahy and Shanahan turned upon the obstinate Grady, and the dispute waxed clamorous till Hewitt stopped it.

      “Come, come,” he said, “never mind the time then. Settle that between you after you’ve gone. Does either of you remember—not calculate, you know, but remember—the time you got to Ballyshiel?—the actual time by a clock—not a guess.”

      Not one of the three had looked at a clock at Ballyshiel.

      “Do you remember anything about coming home again?”

      They did not. They looked furtively at one another and presently broke into a grin.

      “Ah! I see how that was,” Hewitt said good-humouredly. “That’s all now, I think. Come, it’s ten shillings each, I think.” And he handed over the money. The men touched their forelocks again, stowed away the money and prepared to depart. As they went Larry Shanahan stepped mysteriously back again and said in a whisper, “Maybe the jintlemen wud like me to kiss the book on ut? An’ as to the toime—”

      “Oh, no thank you,” Hewitt laughed. “We take your word for it Mr. Shanahan.” And Mr. Shanahan pulled his forelock again and vanished.

      “There’s nothing but confusion to be got from them,” Mr. Bowyer remarked testily. “It’s a mere waste of time.”

      “No, no, not a waste of time,” Hewitt replied, “nor a waste of money. One thing is made pretty plain. That is that the shot was fired on Tuesday. Mrs. Hurley never noticed the report, but these three men were close by, and there is no doubt that they heard it. It’s the only single thing they agree about at all. They contradict one another over everything else, but they agree completely in that. Of course I wish we could have got the exact time; but that can’t be helped. As it is it is rather fortunate that they disagreed so entirely. Two of them are certainly wrong, and perhaps all three. In any case it wouldn’t have been safe to trust to mere computation of time by three men just beginning to get drunk, who had no particular reason for remembering. But if by any chance they had agreed on the time we might have been led into a wrong track altogether by taking the thing as fact. But a gunshot is not such a doubtful thing. When three independent witnesses hear a gunshot together there can be little doubt that a shot has been fired. Now I think you’d better sit down. Perhaps you can find something to read. I’m about to make a very minute examination of this place, and it will probably bore you if you’ve nothing else to do.”

      But Mr. Bowyer would think of nothing but the business in hand. “I don’t understand that window,” he said, shaking his finger towards it as he spoke. “Not at all. Why should Main want to get in and out by a window? He wasn’t a stranger.”

      Hewitt began a most careful inspection of the whole surface of floor, ceiling, walls and furniture of the sitting-room. At the fireplace he stooped and lifted with great care a few sheets of charred paper from the grate. These he put on the window-ledge. “Will you just bring over that little screen,” he asked, “to keep the draught from this burnt paper? Thank you. It looks like letter paper, and thick letter paper, since the ashes are very little broken. The weather has been fine, and there has been no fire in that grate for a long time. These papers have been carefully burned with a match or a candle.”

      “Ah! perhaps the letters poor young Rewse was writing in the morning. But what can they tell us?”

      “Perhaps nothing—perhaps a great deal.” Hewitt was examining the cinders keenly, holding the surface sideways to the light. “Come,” he said, “see if I can guess Rewse’s address in London. 17 Mountjoy Gardens, Hampstead. Is that it?”

      “Yes. Is it there? Can you read it? Show me.” Mr. Bowyer hurried across the room, eager and excited.

      “You can sometimes read words on charred paper,” Hewitt replied, “as you may have noticed. This has curled and crinkled rather too much in the burning, but it is plainly notepaper with an embossed heading, which stands out rather clearly. He has evidently brought some notepaper with him from home in his trunk. See, you can just see the ink lines crossing out the address; but there’s little else. At the beginning of the letter there is ‘My d——’ then a gap, and then the last stroke of ‘M’ and the rest of the word ‘mother.’ ‘My dear Mother,’ or ‘My dearest Mother’ evidently. Something follows too in the same line, but that is unreadable. ‘My dear Mother and Sister’ perhaps. After that there is nothing recognisable. The first letter looks rather like ‘W,’ but even that is indistinct. It seems to be a longish letter—several sheets, but they are stuck together in the charring. Perhaps more than one letter.”

      “The thing is plain,” Mr. Bowyer said. “The poor lad was writing home, and perhaps to other places, and Main, after his crime, burned the letters, because they would have stultified his own with the lying tale about small-pox.”

      Hewitt said nothing, but resumed his general search. He passed his hand rapidly over every inch of the surface of everything in the room. Then he entered the bedroom and began an inspection of the same sort there. There were two beds, one at each end of the room, and each inch of each piece of bed linen passed rapidly under his sharp eye. After the bedroom he betook himself to the little bath-room, and then to the scullery. Finally he went outside and examined every board of a close fence that stood a few feet from the sitting-room window, and the brick-paved path lying between.

      When it was all over he returned to Mr. Bowyer. “Here is a strange thing,” he said. “The shot passed clean through Rewse’s body, striking no bones, and meeting no solid resistance. It was a good-sized bullet, as Dr. O’Reilly testifies, and therefore must have had a large charge of powder behind it in the cartridge. After emerging from Rewse’s back it must have struck something else in this confined place. Yet on nowhere—ceiling, floor, wall nor furniture—can I find the mark of a bullet nor the bullet itself.”

      “The bullet itself Main might easily have got rid of.”

      “Yes, but not the mark. Indeed, the bullet would scarcely be easy to get at if it had struck anything I have seen about here; it would have buried itself. Just look round now. Where could a bullet strike in this place without leaving its mark?”

      Mr.