Jack on the Gallows Tree Read Online Free PDF Page A

Charles Carew, one to the couple in whose house she lived, Garnett and Mona Baxeter, and the third to a cousin Martha Tissot.”
    â€œMartha, eh?”
    â€œAnything wrong?”
    â€œNothing. But I know the lady. Go on.”
    â€œMrs Westmacott’s was a much more complicated affair and she had more to leave. There were legacies to the Bickleys, the man and wife who had worked for her for years, to various literary and artistic societies, to local charities connected with St Augustine’s church and to someone named Grace Lightfoot. There was also a sizeable legacy to a former lady’s maid of hers married to a man called Thickett. The rest goes to her children, but not in equal proportions. The eldest son, Dante, gets as much as the other two, Gabriel and Christina, put together.”
    â€œNice range of suspects if you’re right in thinking money’s the motive.”
    â€œNow as to the bodies. Medical examination has revealed no sign of a struggle in either case. Both women had been strangled with something soft like a scarf which left no abrasions. Mrs Westmacott is believed to have died somewhere round about midnight and Miss Carew about two hours earlier. Each had been laid flat on her back with the lily stem in her clasped hands.”
    â€œHave you kept the stems?”
    â€œOf course.”
    â€œHow many flowers to each?”
    â€œAre you being funny?”
    â€œNo. I’ve a reason for asking.”
    â€œThree each, I believe.”
    â€œHad there been more?”
    â€œI daresay. Why?”
    â€œBut you didn’t notice? Listen, John, phone to your office and ask, will you?”
    â€œI thought you were resting.”
    Moore was absent a few minutes and came back to say that one had originally had five blooms, the other four. Carolus thanked him quite seriously.
    â€œMiss Carew’s body,” continued Moore, “was found by a roadmender called Thickett. He swears that except when he took hold of the arm to shake Miss Carew who, he thought, was asleep, he did not touch the body. He cycled down to the call-box at the cross roads and phoned us. I was in the office and went out myself.”
    â€œGood.”
    â€œIt was, our records tell us, an extremely dark and cloudy night, but there was no rain. The ground was fairly soft and we were able to distinguish some footprints, of which we have casts.”
    â€œReally. Footprints, eh? It’s years since I remember footprints being used as evidence.”
    â€œI don’t know that they will be. You see, they were size eight (men’s), and as you know this can mean almost anything. From what I can gather of this murderer he wouldn’t just have overlooked the question of footprints. A man, however large his feet (unless they were truly abnormal), could squeeze into a pair of shoes size eight if the laces had been removed. Or, however small his feet were, he could walk in them for a short distance. Also, most women could do the same.”
    â€œWhat makes you suppose anyone did? Your murderer, knowing his shoes were of a popular size, might have just kept his own on. Why should you think he didn’t?”
    â€œBecause an old pair of shoes, men’s, size eight, was found in the ditch between the road and the quarry. They had been worn by whoever left the footprints.”
    â€œHad they, by jove? This
is
getting interesting. Have they been identified?”
    â€œNo, but they had been newly soled and heeled by a shoemaker called Humpling. He says that six months or more ago a pair of shoes was missing from his shop. He cannot swear these are the ones, but he is sure these were repaired by him. Of the people so far connected with the case he appears to know Mrs Westmacott’s servants the Bickleys and a man called Wright, who is chauffeur to your friend Miss Tissot. We are trying to trace the owner of the shoes that were missing from Humpling’s shop.”
    â€œBack to