Death Comes to Cambers Read Online Free

Bobby had not stopped him with a gesture for silence.
    Yet Bobby himself was almost as much affected by the bewildering suddenness with which this horror had leaped upon them. For a moment he had a brief vision of Lady Cambers as he had known her – brisk, energetic, authoritative – directing everybody and everything the way they should go, arranging all things to her taste, full of confidence in herself and in life. And now it seemed there had fallen upon her, without warning, a strange and dreadful doom. Recovering himself with an effort, reminding himself there was much that must need doing, he said: ‘How... I mean... what’s happened... is there anything to show...?’
    Young Ray Hardy sank his voice to a whisper. It seemed he was afraid of his own voice, of his own words. He said: ‘It’s murder... murder all right.... I don’t know who did it... none of us knew anything, not till Mr. Bowman came and told us.’
    â€˜You’ve seen yourself... you’re sure...?’ Bobby asked.
    â€˜I helped carry her to Eddy Dene’s shed over there,’ answered Ray. ‘Looks she’s been throttled – strangled.’ He gulped. ‘I know nothing about it, but murder that would be – murder.’
    â€˜It was burglars she was afraid of,’ Farman interrupted, in a queer, high-pitched voice. ‘Burglars. If it’s murder – well, who did it?’
    â€˜Yes, that’s it. Who did it?’ Ray repeated. ‘That’s what they’re all saying, and no one knows. God knows I don’t!’
    He was evidently badly shaken, and that perhaps was little wonder. There was a heavy sweat on his forehead, and he wiped it away with the sleeve of his coat. Bobby, looking at him with close attention, did not find himself very favourably impressed. His eyes were bloodshot and heavy, his mouth loose, his chin seemed to run away from it. A weak face, Bobby thought, and with a suggestion in those bloodshot eyes of too great a fondness for beer and for strong ale; no lad of his apparent age should have eyes like that. But one had to make allowance for the shock of such a happening, and he continued in the same hurried, jerky voice: ‘It’s our field, but we didn’t know, none of us, till Mr. Bowman came running and shouting to us to come and help. Awful he looked, and running like all, he was, and you’ve only to look at her to see it must be murder. Jordan says so, too. He’s sent to Hirlpool for help. Dad says it did ought to be Scotland Yard up in London by rights, but Jordan says it’s Hirlpool first and Scotland Yard afterwards as required. Dad said he had a good mind to ring up Scotland Yard himself, only Jordan’s police, and he ought to know. It’s our field where she was, but none of us knew a thing about it till Mr. Bowman came running and calling across the turnips.’
    All this came tumbling out in one breathless spate of words. It was how the boy’s terror and excitement found relief. That Jordan was the name of the local sergeant of police, Bobby already knew. With one constable, a man named Norris, to help him, he guarded the King’s peace in this part of the country, and as a rule had nothing much more serious to deal with than the theft of a stray hen or the disputes of two quarrelsome neighbours. Bobby knew, too, that Hirlpool was the county town and the headquarters of the county police, of which the head was a Colonel Lawson. It was quite recently that Colonel Lawson had been appointed to his position by a Watch Committee convinced that discipline and organization were the chief things to consider in police work, and, though Bobby recognized that there was much to be said for that belief, he also thought that probably the newly appointed chief constable was not likely to have done much as yet to improve a detective department known to be somewhat old-fashioned in its methods and ideas, or, indeed,