In the Mayor's Parlour

"You see that handsome woman over there—next to the older one?" he whispered. "That's the Mrs. Saumarez you've heard of—that your unfortunate cousin was very friendly with. Rich young widow, she is, and deuced pretty and attractive—Wallingford used to dine with her a good deal. I wonder if she's any ideas about this mystery? However, I guess we shall hear many things before the day's out; of course I haven't the slightest notion what evidence is going to be given. But I've a pretty good idea that Seagrave means to say some pretty straight things to the jury!"

Here Tansley proved to be right. The Coroner, in opening the proceedings, made some forcible remarks on their unusual gravity and importance. Here was a case in which the chief magistrate of one of the most ancient boroughs in England had been found dead in his official room under circumstances which clearly seemed to point to murder. Already there were rumours in the town and neighbourhood of the darkest and most disgraceful sort—that the Mayor of Hathelsborough had been done to death, in a peculiarly brutal fashion, by a man or men who disagreed with the municipal reforms which he was intent on carrying out. It would be a lasting, an indelible blot on the old town's fair fame, never tarnished before in this way, if this inquiry came to naught, if no definite verdict was given, he earnestly hoped that by the time it concluded they would be in possession of facts which would, so to speak, clear the town, and any political party in the town. He begged them to give the closest attention to all that would be put before them, and to keep open minds until they heard all the available evidence.

"A fairly easy matter in this particular case!" muttered Tansley, as the jurymen went out to discharge their distasteful, preliminary task of viewing the body of the murdered man. "I don't suppose there's a single man there who has the ghost of a theory, and I'm doubtful if he'll know much more to-night than he knows now—unless something startling is sprung upon us."

Brent was the first witness called into the box when the court settled down to its business. He formally identified the body of the deceased as that of his cousin, John Wallingford: at the time of his death, Mayor of Hathelsborough, and forty-one years of age. He detailed the particulars of his own coming to the town on the evening of the murder, and told how he and Bunning, going upstairs to the Mayor's Parlour, had found Wallingford lying across his desk, dead. All this every man and woman in the court knew already—but the Coroner desired to know more.

"I believe, Mr. Brent," he said, when the witness had given these particulars, "that you are the deceased's nearest blood-relative?"

"I am," replied Brent.

"Then you can give us some information which may be of use. Although the Mayor had lived in Hathelsborough some twelve years or so, he was neither a native of the town nor of these parts. Now, can you give us some particulars about him—about his family and his life before he came to this borough?"

"Yes," said Brent. "My cousin was the only son—only child, in fact—of the Reverend Septimus Wallingford, who was sometime Vicar of Market Meadow, in Berkshire. He is dead—many years ago—so is his wife. My cousin was educated at Reading Grammar School, and on leaving it he was articled to a firm of solicitors in that town. After qualifying as a solicitor, he remained with that firm for some time. About twelve years ago he came to this place as managing clerk to a Hathelsborough firm; its partners eventually retired, and he bought their practice."

"Was he ever married?"

"Never!"

"You knew him well?"

"He was some twelve years my senior," answered Brent, "so I was a mere boy when he was a young man. But of late years we have seen a good deal of each other—he has frequently visited me in London, and this would have been my third visit to him here. We corresponded regularly."

"You were on good terms?"

"We were on very good terms."

"And confidential terms?"

"As far as I know—yes. He took great interest in my work as a journalist, and I took great interest in his career in this town."

"And I understand that he has marked his sense of—shall we say, kinship for you by leaving you all his property?"

"He has!"

"Now, did he ever say anything to you, by word of mouth or letter, about any private troubles?"

"No, never!"

"Or about any public ones?"

"Well, some months ago, soon after he became Mayor of Hathelsborough, he made a sort of joking reference, in a letter, to something that might come under that head."

"Yes? What, now?"

"He said that he had started on his task of cleaning out the Augean stable of Hathelsborough, and that the old task of Hercules was child's play compared to his."

"I believe, Mr. Brent, that you visited your cousin here in the town about Christmas last? Did he say anything to you about Hathelsborough at that time? I mean, as regards what he called his Augean stables task?"

Brent hesitated. He glanced at the eagerly-listening spectators, and he smiled a little.

"Well," he replied half-hesitatingly, "he did! He said that in his opinion Hathelsborough was the rottenest and most corrupt little town in all England!"

"Did you take that as a seriously meant statement, Mr. Brent?"

"Oh, well—he laughed as he made it. I took it as a specimen of his rather heightened way of putting things."

"Did he say anything that led you to think that he believed himself to have bitter enemies in the town?"

"No," said Brent, "he did not."

"Neither then nor at any other time?"

"Neither then nor at any other time."

The Coroner asked no further questions, and Brent sat down again by Tansley, and settled himself to consider whatever evidence might follow. He tried to imagine himself a Coroner or juryman, and to estimate and weigh the testimony of each succeeding witness in its relation to the matter into which the court was inquiring. Some of it, he thought, was relevant; some had little in it that carried affairs any further. Yet he began to see that even the apparently irrelevant evidence was not without its importance. They were links, these statements, these answers; links that went to the making of a chain.

He was already familiar with most of the evidence: he knew what each witness was likely to tell before one or other entered the box. Bunning came next after himself; Bunning had nothing new to tell. Nor was there anything new in the medical evidence given by Dr. Wellesley and Dr. Barber—all the town knew how the Mayor had been murdered, and the purely scientific explanations as to the cause of death were merely details. More interest came when Hawthwaite produced the fragment of handkerchief picked up on the hearth of the Mayor's Parlour, half-burnt; and when he brought forward the rapier which had been discovered behind the bookcase; still more when a man who kept an old curiosity shop in a back street of the town proved that he had sold the rapier to Wallingford only a few days before the murder. But interest died down again while the Borough Surveyor produced elaborate plans and diagrams, illustrating the various corridors, passages, entrances and exits of the Moot Hall, with a view to showing the difficulty of access to the Mayor's Parlour. It revived once more when the policeman who had been on duty at the office in the basement stepped into the box and was questioned as to the possibilities of entrance to the Moot Hall through the door near which his desk was posted. For on pressure by the Coroner he admitted that between six and eight o'clock on the fateful evening he had twice been absent from the neighbourhood of that door for intervals of five or six minutes—it was therefore possible that the murderer had slipped in and slipped out without attracting attention.

This admission produced the first element of distinct sensation which had so far materialized. As almost every person present was already fairly well acquainted with the details of what had transpired on the evening of the murder—Peppermore having published every scrap of information he could rake up, in successive editions of his Monitor—the constable's belated revelation came as a surprise. Hawthwaite turned on the witness with an irate, astonished look; the Coroner glanced at Hawthwaite as if he were puzzled; then looked down at certain memoranda lying before him. He turned from this to the witness, a somewhat raw, youthful policeman.

"I understood that you were never away from that door between six and eight o'clock on the evening in question?" he said. "Now you admit that you were twice away from it?"

"Yes, sir. I'm sorry, sir, I clean forgot that when—when the superintendent asked me at first. I—I was a bit flustered like."

"Now let us get a clear statement about this," said the Coroner, after a pause. "We know quite well from the plans, and from our own knowledge, that anyone could get up to the Mayor's Parlour through the police office in the basement at the rear of the Moot Hall. What time did you go on duty at the door that opens into the office, from St. Laurence Lane?"

"Six o'clock, sir."

"And you were about the door—at a desk there, eh?—until when?"

"Till after eight, sir."

"But you say you were absent for a short time, twice?"

"Yes, sir, I remember now that I was."

"What were the times of those two absences?"

"Well, sir, about ten minutes to seven I went along to the charge office for a few minutes—five or six minutes. Then at about a quarter to eight I went downstairs into the cellar to get some paraffin for a lamp—I might be away as long, then, sir."

"And, of course, during your absence anybody could have left or entered—unnoticed?"

"Well, they could, sir, but I don't think anybody did."

"Why, now?"

"Because, sir, the door opening into St. Laurence Lane is a very heavy one, and I never heard it either open or close. The latch is a heavy one, too, sir, and uncommon stiff."

"Still, anybody might," observed the Coroner. "Now, what is the length of the passage between that door, the door at the foot of the stairs leading to this court—by which anybody would have to come to get that way to the Mayor's Parlour?"

The witness reflected for a moment.

"Well, about ten yards, sir," he answered.

The Coroner looked at the plan which the Borough Surveyor had placed before him and the jury a few minutes previously. Before he could say anything further, Hawthwaite rose from his seat and making his way to him exchanged a few whispered remarks with him. Presently the Coroner nodded, as if in assent to some suggestions.

"Oh, very well," he said. "Then perhaps we'd better have her at once. Call—what's her name, did you say? Oh, yes—Sarah Jane Spizey!"

From amidst a heterogeneous collection of folk, men and women, congregated at the rear of the witness-box, a woman came forward—one of the most extraordinary looking creatures that he had ever seen, thought Brent. She was nearly six feet in height; she was correspondingly built; her arms appeared to be as brawny as a navvy's; her face was of the shape and roundness of a full moon; her mouth was a wide slit, her nose a button; her eyes were as shrewd and hard as they were small and close-set. A very Grenadier of a woman!—and apparently quite unmoved by the knowledge that everybody was staring at her.

Sarah Jane Spizey—yes. Wife of the Town Bellman. Resident in St. Laurence Lane. Went out charing sometimes; sometimes worked at Marriner's Laundry. Odd-job woman, in fact.

"Mrs. Spizey," said the Coroner, "I understand that on the evening of Mr. Wallingford's death you were engaged in some work in the Moot Hall. Is that so?"

"Yes, sir. Which I was a-washing the floor of this very court."

"What time was that, Mrs. Spizey?"

"Which I was at it, your Worshipful, from six o'clock to eight."

"Did you leave this place at all during that time?"

"Not once, sir; not for a minute."

"Now during the whole of that time, Mrs. Spizey, did you see anybody come up those stairs, cross the court, and go towards the Mayor's Parlour?"

"Which I never did, sir! I never see a soul of any sort. Which the place was empty, sir, for all but me and my work, sir."

The Coroner motioned Mrs. Spizey to stand down, and glanced at Hawthwaite.

"I think this would be a convenient point at which to adjourn," he said. "I–"

But Hawthwaite's eyes were turned elsewhere. In the body of the court an elderly man had risen.

CHAPTER VII

THE VOLUNTARY WITNESS

Everybody present, not excluding Brent, knew the man at whom the Superintendent of Police was staring, and who evidently wished to address the Coroner. He was Mr. Samuel John Epplewhite, an elderly, highly respectable tradesman of the town, and closely associated with that Forward Party in the Town Council of which the late Mayor had become the acknowledged leader; a man of substance and repute, who would not break in without serious reason upon proceedings of the sort then going on. The Coroner, following Hawthwaite's glance, nodded to him.

"You wish to make some observation, Mr. Epplewhite?" he inquired.

"Before you adjourn, sir, if you please," replied Epplewhite, "I should like to make a statement—evidence, in fact, sir. I think, after what we've heard, that it's highly necessary that I should."

"Certainly," answered the Coroner. "Anything you can tell, of course. Then, perhaps you'll step into the witness-box?"

The folk who crowded the court to its very doors looked on impatiently while Epplewhite went through the legal formalities. Laying down the Testament on which he had taken the oath, he turned to the Coroner. But the Coroner again nodded to him.

"You had better tell us what is in your mind in your own way, Mr. Epplewhite," he said. "We are, of course, in utter ignorance of what it is you can tell. Put it in your own fashion."

Epplewhite folded his hands on the ledge of the witness-box and looked around the court before finally settling his eyes on the Coroner: it seemed to Brent as if he were carefully considering the composition, severally and collectively, of his audience.

"Well, sir," he began, in slow, measured accents, "what I have to say, as briefly as I can, is this: everybody here, I believe, is aware that our late Mayor and myself were on particularly friendly terms. We'd always been more or less of friends since his first coming to the town: we'd similar tastes and interests. But our friendship had been on an even more intimate basis during the last year or two, and especially of recent months, owing, no doubt, to the fact that we belonged to the same party on the Town Council, and were both equally anxious to bring about a thorough reform in the municipal administration of the borough. When Mr. Wallingford was elected Mayor last November, he and I, and our supporters on the Council, resolved that during his year of office we would do our best to sweep away certain crying abuses and generally get the affairs of Hathelsborough placed on a more modern and a better footing. We were all–"

The Coroner held up his hand.

"Let us have a clear understanding," he said. "I am gathering—officially, of course—from what you are saying that in Hathelsborough Town Council there are two parties, opposed to each other: a party pledged to Reform, and another that is opposed to Reform. Is that so, Mr. Epplewhite?"

"Precisely so," answered the witness. "And of the Reform party, the late Mayor was the leader. This is well known in the town—it's a matter of common gossip. It is also well known to members of the Town Council that Mr. Wallingford's proposals for reform were of a very serious and drastic nature, that we of his party were going to support them through thick and thin, and that they were bitterly opposed by the other party, whose members were resolved to fight them tooth and nail."

"It may be as well to know what these abuses were which you proposed to reform?" suggested the Coroner. "I want to get a thorough clearing-up of everything."

"Well," responded the witness, with another glance around the court, "the late Mayor had a rooted and particular objection to the system of payments and pensions in force at present, which, without doubt, owes its existence to favouritism and jobbery. There are numerous people in the town drawing money from the borough funds who have no right to it on any ground whatever. There are others who draw salaries for what are really sinecures. A great deal of the ratepayers' money has gone in this way—men in high places in the Corporation have used their power to benefit relations and favourites: I question if there's another town in the country in which such a state of things would be permitted. But there is a more serious matter than that, one which Mr. Wallingford was absolutely determined, with the help of his party, and backed by public opinion, if he could win it over—no easy thing, for we had centuries of usage and tradition against us!—to bring to an end. That is, the fact that the financial affairs of this town are entirely controlled by what is virtually a self-constituted body, called the Town Trustees. They are three in number. If one dies, the surviving two select his successor—needless to say, they take good care that they choose a man who is in thorough sympathy with their own ideas. Now the late Mayor was convinced that this system led to nothing but—well, to put it mildly, to nothing but highly undesirable results, and he claimed that the Corporation had the right to deprive the existing Town Trustees of their power, and to take into its own hands the full administration of the borough finances. And of course there was much bitter animosity aroused by this proposal, because the Town Trustees have had a free hand and done what they liked with the town's money for a couple of centuries!"

The Coroner, who was making elaborate notes, lifted his pen.

"Who are the Town Trustees at present, Mr. Epplewhite?" he inquired.

Epplewhite smiled, as a man might smile who knows that a question is only asked as a mere formality.

"The Town Trustees at present, sir," he answered quietly, "are Mr. Alderman Crood, Deputy Mayor; Mr. Councillor Mallett, Borough Auditor; and Mr. Councillor Coppinger, Borough Treasurer."

Amidst a curious silence, broken only by the scratching of the Coroner's pen, Alderman Crood rose heavily in his place amongst the spectators.

"Mr. Coroner," he said, with some show of injured feeling, "I object, sir, to my name being mentioned in connection with this here matter. You're inquiring, sir–"

"I'm inquiring, Mr. Crood, into the circumstances surrounding the death of John Wallingford," said the Coroner. "If you can throw any light on them, I shall be glad to take your evidence. At present I am taking the evidence of another witness. Yes, Mr. Epplewhite?"

"Well, sir, I come to recent events," continued Epplewhite, smiling grimly as the Deputy-Mayor, flushed and indignant, resumed his seat. "The late Mayor was very well aware that his proposals were regarded, not merely with great dislike, but with positive enmity. He, and those of us who agreed with him, were constantly asked in the Council Chamber what right we had to be endeavouring to interfere with a system that had suited our fathers and grandfathers? We were warned too, in the Council Chamber, that we should get ourselves into trouble–"

"Do you refer to actual threats?" asked the Coroner.

"Scarcely that, sir—hints, and so on," replied the witness. "But of late, in the case of the late Mayor, actual threats have been used. And to bring my evidence to a point, Mr. Coroner, I now wish to make a certain statement, on my oath, and to produce a certain piece of evidence, to show that Mr. Wallingford's personal safety was threatened only a few days before his murder!"

Thus saying, Epplewhite thrust a hand into the inner pocket of his coat, and, producing a letter, held it out at arm's length, so that every one could see it. So holding it, he turned to the Coroner.

"It is just a week ago, sir," he proceeded, "that Mr. Wallingford came to supper at my house. After supper, he and I, being alone, began talking about the subject which was uppermost in our minds—municipal reform. That day I had had considerable talk with two or three fellow-members of the Council who belonged to the opposite party, and as a result I showed to Wallingford that opposition to our plans was growing more concentrated, determined and bitter. He laughed a little satirically. 'It's gone beyond even that stage with me, personally, Epplewhite,' he said. 'Don't you ever be surprised, my friend, if you hear of my being found with a bullet through my head or a knife between my ribs!' 'What do you mean?' said I. 'Nonsense!' He laughed again, and pulled out this envelope. 'All right,' he answered. 'You read that!' I read what was in the envelope, sir—and I now pass it to you!"

The Coroner silently took the letter which was passed across to him from the witness, withdrew a sheet of paper from it, and read the contents with an inscrutable face and amidst a dead silence. It seemed a long time before he turned to the jury. Then, he held up the sheet of paper and the envelope which had contained it.

"Gentlemen!" he said. "I shall have to draw your particular attention to this matter. This is an anonymous letter. From the date on the postmark, it was received by the late Mayor about a week before he showed it to Mr. Epplewhite. It is a typewritten communication. The address on the envelope is typewritten; the letter itself is typewritten. I will now read the letter to you. It is as follows:

"'Mr. Mayor,

"'You are a young man in an old town, but you are old enough and sharp enough to take a hint. Take one now, and mind your own business. What business is it of yours to interfere with good old customs in a place to which you don't belong and where you're still a comparative stranger? You only got elected to the Mayoral chair by one vote, and if you are fool enough to think that you and those behind you are strong enough to upset things you'll find yourself wrong, for you won't be allowed. There's something a deal stronger in this town than what you and them are, and that you'll see proved—or happen you won't see it, for if you go on as you are doing, putting your nose in where you've no right, you'll be made so that you'll never see nor hear again. Things is not going to be upset here for want of putting upsetters out of the way; there's been better men than you quietly sided for less. So take a quiet warning, leave things alone. It would become you a deal better if you'd be a bit more hospitable to the Council and give them a glass of decent wine instead of the teetotal stuff you disgraced the table with when you gave your Mayoral banquet—first time any Mayor of this good old borough ever did such a thing. There's them that's had quite enough of such goings-on, and doesn't mind how soon you're shifted. So mend your ways before somebody makes them as they'll never need mending any more.'

"Now, gentlemen," continued the Coroner, as he laid down the letter, "there are one or two things about that communication to which I wish to draw your attention. First of all, it is the composition of a vulgar and illiterate, or, at any rate, semi-illiterate person. I don't think its phrasing and illiteracy are affected; I think it has been written in its present colloquial form without art or design, by whoever wrote it; it is written, phrased, expressed, precisely as a vulgar, coarse sort of person would speak. That is the first point. The second is—it is typewritten. Now, in these days, there are a great many typewriting machines in use in the town; small as the town is, we know there are a great many, in offices, shops, institutions, banks, even private houses. It is not at all likely that the sender of this letter would employ a professional typist to write it, not even a clerk, nor any employé—therefore he typed it himself. I will invite your attention to the letter, which I now hand to you, and then I will place it in the custody of the police, who will, of course, use their best endeavours to trace it."

He passed the letter over to the foreman of the jury, and turned to the witness-box.

"I conclude, Mr. Epplewhite, that the late Mayor left that letter in your possession?" he asked.

"He did, sir," replied Epplewhite. "He said, half jokingly, 'You can keep that, Epplewhite! If they sacrifice me on the altar of vested interests, it'll be a bit of evidence.' So I locked up the letter in my safe there and then, and it has remained there until this morning."