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- Herausgeber: Booksell-Verlag
- Kategorie: Krimi
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021
In "The Caravan Crime," Fergus Hume crafts a gripping detective narrative, intertwining elements of mystery and social commentary. Set against the backdrop of a traveling caravan, the novel explores themes of deception, class struggle, and human fallibility. Hume employs a meticulous literary style that captures the atmospheric details of the caravan life while presenting a tightly woven plot that keeps readers on the edge of their seats. The intricate character development and vivid descriptions reflect the author's ability to mirror the complexities of Victorian society, positioning his work within the broader context of 19th-century mystery fiction, alongside contemporaries like Arthur Conan Doyle. Fergus Hume was a trailblazing figure in the genre of detective fiction, often called the 'father of the mystery novel.' His diverse background, from law studies to journalism, enriched his narrative techniques and thematic focus, particularly the exploration of moral ambiguity. Hume's personal experience with societal disparities likely inspired the nuanced character relationships and ethical dilemmas depicted in "The Caravan Crime," making it an insightful exploration of human motives. This novel is an essential read for enthusiasts of mystery literature and historical fiction alike. Hume's ability to weave suspense with social critique resonates with modern audiences, inviting readers to reflect on the timeless themes of justice and morality. Delve into "The Caravan Crime" to uncover not just a thrilling tale, but also a rich commentary on the human condition.
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The Caravan Crime
Table of Contents
Chapter I
Along a twisting country lane, warm and dusty, and richly colored by the dying radiance of a July sunset, jangled a battered caravan, as brown and worn as the ancient horse which lugged it reluctantly onward. From innumerable hooks on back, front, and sides dangled tin cans, iron kettles, bristling brooms, bundles of brushes, and such-like domestic necessaries, together with goat-skin rugs, woollen mats, reach-me-down suits, carpet clippers, and many pairs of stout boots. The whole crazy vehicle, with its hawkers’ stock-in-trade, creaked and groaned and labored complainingly, as if on the verge of disintegration.
Not so the driver—presumably the owner. He sat rigidly upright, holding the reins alert for adventure; slim and straight, and spare as a poplar; filled to the brim with the fiery wine of youth. Handsome, too, a woman would have declared at the sight of that clean-shaven face, bronzed, smooth-skinned, oval, with clear-cut features, and closely-clipped dark hair. The young man’s firm mouth, watchful grey eyes, strong jaw, and square chin revealed him as an inborn master of his fellows. He should have been commanding men in war, controlling some big business in peace; somehow governing, somehow dictating.
Yet here he was in a dingy grey riding suit and a shabby cap, with disreputable gaiters and heavy boots, driving an equally disreputable caravan for the traffic of gipsy merchandise. His being in such a galley would certainly have startled M. Jourdain, that innocent gentleman, who was only surprised when he found virtue in unexpected places. A country policeman, who was strolling along the lane, knew nothing of Moliere’s hero, but he felt much the same when the dreary old caravan rumbled round the corner. The enigmatic driver was the very last person he expected to meet in his back-water of Life’s tumultuous river.
On the instant Constable Selwin’s right hand went to his helmet, as his broad, round face expressed excessive and very natural surprise. “Mr. Lawson!”
“Selwin!” Lawson spoke in an easy, imperious tone, friendly, but with more than a hint of mastership. “We parted at Capetown five years ago to meet in this Rip Van Winkle country. What the dickens are you doing here?”
“Sarley village policeman, sir; married, with a family of two; got into the force six months after reaching Albert Docks. And you, sir?” Selwin ran an observing eye over the driver’s dress and the driver’s caravan. “Ain’t you doing this for a sort o’ bet, sir?”
“For a living, Selwin. After another hunting trip—sorry you weren’t with me that time—I took the trail to South America, and had a ton-hole time in the wilds. Came home last year to find father dead, leaving me nothing but his blessing.”
“The colonel dead, sir?”
“Two years dead. Lost all his money in some speculation, and I had to earn a living somehow. I saved a gipsy’s old mother from drowning, and when he died nine months ago he left me this caravan and the horse. As I couldn’t stick an office, I took to trading round the country.”
“But a gentleman like you, Mr. Lawson—”
“Oh, that’s all right, Selwin. I’m having a topping time, although I don’t meet with such adventures as we did when we were on that hunting trip in Africa. So there you are. I want to camp hereabouts tonight.”
“Sarley Wood’s the place,” volunteered the policeman, promptly pointing a guiding thumb over his left shoulder. “Quarter of a mile on, Sir; glade in the heart of it, sir, with water for the horse. And no one will say anything if I don’t—which,” added Selwin, viciously, “ain’t my style with a gentleman who saved me from being eaten by a lion like Daniel.”
“Who wasn’t eaten,” answered Lawson, with a laugh. “Look me up tonight.”
“Yes, sir!” Selwin saluted again. “Anything I can do, sir?”
Lawson fished out a shilling from his pocket. “Tobacco!”
“Navy cut, sir.” The policeman fielded the coin dexterously. “I know the sort, sir, none better, after two years of hunting and shooting along o’ you, sir,” and he stood looking after the caravan with an admiring air—for the driver—not for the vehicle—which excited his disgust.
Dick—that was the diminutive of Lawson’s baptismal name to his few and tried friends—easily found the wood, and less easily the glade in the heart of the wood. Here, near a pond of clear water and under the whispering foliage of a spreading beech, he halted his disreputable caravan to prepare camp as in old African days. But there was no ready-handed Selwin to assist him now, as then, and he regretted the lost comradeship. However, with the methodical thoroughness of long experience he unharnessed the ancient steed, haltered him, and selected a grazing ground. Nigh to this was a narrow tangled path—leading to nowhere so far as he knew—and he roped the animal to a birch tree at its entrance. Afterwards he lighted a fire, filled his kettle from the bubbling spring which fed the pond, and made ready the frying pan for eggs and bacon.
By the time he had arranged his tin dinner service, with knife, fork, and spoon, on a coarse white cloth spread over a convenient stump, the water was boiling and the contents of the pan spluttering. So Dick brewed hot and strong tea to enjoy a truly excellent supper, which was very acceptable after his long drive from Tarhaven to this hamlet in the wilderness. Not that he had seen Sarley Village, or wished to see it for the moment, but he knew that it was within exploring distance. Meanwhile he was very well satisfied with his solitude, and reclined lazily by the fire, smoking thoughtfully and considering a somewhat problematic future. The outlook was not encouraging, for he seemed to be at the bottom of the abyss. Regularly the distant Sarley church clock chimed the hours and the quarters; but so deep in thought was the young fellow that he was amazed when 10 booms of the bell wakened him to the swift passing of time.
“Ten o’clock, b’ Jove!” he said, speaking aloud after the fashion of the solitary, and rose to stretch himself with a comfortable yawn. “Time for bye-bye. Shall I sleep in the open, or under cover?”
A light hand swept along the grass told him that dew was beading every blade so Lawson sauntered into the caravan with an electric torch for his night-lamp. On the bed he found an envelope, which must have fallen unawares from his pocket. As it contained a possible answer to his cogitations regarding his future he took out the letter to refresh his memory. The epistle directed him to seek out Lady Hamber of Sarley Court, with a view to employment as a bailiff on her estate. Attached was a visiting card inscribed with the name ‘Oliver Bollerd,’ and a few pencilled words recommending the bearer. Nodding his head in approval, and wondering if the introduction would lead to anything, Dick restored letter and card to the envelope, that to his inner pocket, and yawned again as he proceeded to take off his Norfolk jacket. Before his arms were out of the sleeves he paused and listened, on the alert immediately, like a startled stag. In the stillness there came a cry to his ear—the cry of a woman in pain, such as he had heard several times in Africa. The note of suffering, strange in so solitary a neighborhood, sent him shuffling back into his jacket and headlong down the caravan steps. As he leapt towards the dying fire he heard a low moan in the dark distance, and flung on a bundle of brushwood to excite a blaze. But the sufferer was beyond the bound of the luminous circle, and only when Lawson heard her moan again did he discover her whereabouts. A few strides brought him to the entrance to the path near which the horse was tethered, and he swore inwardly at his neglect to bring the torch, which would have given him sufficient light for necessary examination of sex and condition. But it was a woman, sure enough, as he soon became certain when she explained her outcry. “I stumbled over the horse’s rope, and have sprained my ankle,” she murmured in a low and very musical voice.
“Sorry, Madam,” Lawson went down on his knees. “I didn’t expect anyone to come down the path, or I should have tied up my horse elsewhere.”
“You are a gentleman!”
“Of sorts, I suppose.”
“Oh, but you are. I can tell by your voice. Help me; my foot—” she moaned.
“With permission, madam.” Dick picked her up gently and carried her toward the fire, now blazing briskly. Yet even as he did so she feebly resisted his masterful action.
“No! No! No!” She spoke faintly but insistently. “Put me down.”
“Nonsense. I can’t leave you in the darkness with a sprained ankle!” He placed her beside the fire and ran back to the caravan. On the way he marvelled, as did Christabel when she met the Darke Ladye in the magic wood. This lady was not dark, but the fairest of the fair, as he knew from the glimpse he had caught of feathery golden hair; but she was just as lovely and just as richly dressed. What an adventure! Here was a straying damsel, arrayed in a fashionable dinner gown, and wrapped in a gold-embroidered cloak, coming from nowhere into his life. Dick, wondering profoundly at the beneficence of destiny, strode back to his angel, entertained unexpectedly, if not unawares, with an eiderdown quilt, a pillow, a bottle of embrocation, and a few hastily-contrived bandages. The girl, having drawn her glittering cloak closely up to her neck and over her face, so that only a pair of angry eyes were visible, greeted her good Samaritan in a few muffled words the reverse of sweet.
“I wish you wouldn’t!” she snapped, and her voice was as angry as were her eyes.
“My dear young lady, you don’t know what is good for you,” said Lawson, coolly placing the pillow under her head and the quilt over her body.
“If you are a gentleman you will let me go,” she flashed out indignantly.
“Oh by all means.” He rose from his knees and stepped back with a bow.
She made a valiant effort to rise, and failed. “You see I can’t!” she said crossly.
“I have seen that ever since I picked you up over yonder,” the young man assured her dryly, and thinking how excessively feminine she was, and how charming were her contradictions. “Let me have a look at the ankle.”
“No!” She tucked her slender feet in the smartest of evening shoes under the hem of her gown. “Go away. Oh!” Out came the right foot, for, very naturally, the change of position enhanced the pain.
“Don’t be silly,” said her comforter, roughly. “I must rub your foot with this embrocation and bandage it somehow.”
“Are you a doctor?” she asked mistrustfully.
“Would I be rambling round the country in a caravan if I were a doctor—”
“I don’t know—that is—”
“You don’t know anything, not even how impossible you are as an invalid.”
“Oh!” she frowned, and winced—”how very rude.”
“And how very true. Come now, I won’t beat you. Pull off your shoe and stocking.”
Daunted by his imperious manner, and feeling with feminine intuition that he was to be thoroughly trusted, she obeyed. Tenderly the man rubbed the delicate ankle with the strong biting mixture, bandaged it carefully, and stood up to let her put on her shoe; the stocking, of course, being impossible. Then he discovered that she had fainted with the pain and that the cloak had fallen away from her face.
Chapter II
“Oh, b’ jove!” commented the young man, stirred to the core of his appreciative soul by the sight of the exquisite face, delicately perfect, “this is the beauty of the world.”
The praise was superlative, but none the less honest and well deserved. But Dick, very much a gentleman, did not take such pardonable advantage of the situation. After gazing for one glorious moment he hastened to fill a cup at the spring, and was shortly restoring consciousness to this stray Helen. Two splendid blue eyes—Dick guessed from the halo of golden hair that they would be blue—opened slowly with a bewildered expression, which changed suddenly to one of mingled fear and defiance. The girl sat up, drew her rich cloak again around her—but this time not over her face—and shivered at the thought of the isolation. Lawson ascribed this attack of nerves to a matter-of-fact cause. “Foot hurting?” he asked anxiously.
“It’s my ankle,” she retorted, ungraciously.
“Sorry.” He was quite imperturbable. “Ankle hurting?”
It was so smoothly said, yet with such a twinkle in the eyes, that the prostrate lady permitted herself to relieve a smile. Then she frowned; the more so as she became convinced of his good will. “You might do something more useful than stand there laughing at me,” was her unexpected remark.
“So I might,” agreed Dick cheerfully: and stooping. “If you will let me carry you into my caravan and put you on an apology for a bed I think you would be more comfortable.”
“Certainly not. I know nothing about you.”
“Ditto, ditto, so far as you are concerned,” he retorted lightly.
“I am not going to answer any questions.”
“I haven’t asked any.”
“But you will. And I have a brother.”
“Oh. Does he ask questions?”
“No. But I have a—”
“Then I regret to say that I can’t see the connection between—”
This time she interrupted, and petulantly. “Men are so stupid.”
“Granted—and women are so clever. Come now, that is nicely said, isn’t it?”
The girl smiled again and frowned again. “What is the use of talking cleverly? You ought to help me.”
“Good idea. You have only to ask.”
“I want to go to Sarley Grange, two miles from here.”
“Sarley Court,” said man, the supremely stupid, remembering the letter.
“No; Sarley Grange. Don’t you understand?”
“Not-er-exactly,” confessed Lawson, sadly.
“How dense you are. I want to go to Sarley Grange, two miles away. I was walking there when I stumbled over your silly rope.”
Dick surveyed her charming evening frock, which the now open cloak revealed more fully. “Is that you usual costume for walking?”
“Of course not. I came away in a hurry and—and—”
“Yes, yes. That’s all right. I am not asking questions.”
“They won’t be answered if you do ask them!” she cried, crossly; then with delightful inconsistency proceeded to demand information. “What about yourself?”
Dick chuckled at this very feminine turning of the tables. “Well,” he asked, “what about myself?”
“Who are you?”
“A hawker of pots, kettles, pans, brushes.”
“Nonsense; you are a gentleman—”
“Fallen on evil days, if I may venture to complete your sentence.”
“Can’t you be serious?”
“Occasionally, when life is at its best.”
“And now?” she put the question in quite a sympathetic tone.
“It is at its worst. I have a caravan, a horse, another suit of clothes, and a trifle of money. Such is my dismal lot.” He shrugged his shoulders.
“Also good looks, youth, strength, hope, brains, and the wide world before you.”
“You assign to me the gifts of the good,” said Lawson, imperturbably, and wondering at her motherly tone of kindly rebuke.
“I think the gods are very good to you,” said the girl, seriously.
“They are—in sending you here.”
“That is not my opinion,” she replied, dryly. “I wish I were elsewhere.”
“Sarley Grange, for instance.”
“Precisely. But how am I to get there with my sprained ankle?”
“B’ Jove, madame—”
“I am not madam,” she interrupted with a snap.
“Sorry, mademoiselle. What I was about to say is that you have heaps of pluck.”
“Thank you!” She blushed and looked more attractive than ever. “I need it.”
“B’ Jove, you do, sitting there talking so delightfully when you are in pain.”
She blushed again and her eyes shone. Really this was a very charming young gentleman, who knew how to turn a compliment, and evidently, acknowledged the undoubted superiority of women. “But,”—she followed up her thoughts in sober speech, “I don’t think that compliments help me much in my present plight.”
“They are as oil to grease the wheels of Life’s chariot,” said Dick, sententiously. “But to take a more practical view—”
“Which is what I have been asking you to do for the last thirty minutes,” she interpolated with a grimace, for her ankle hurt considerably.
“I can drive you to Sarley Grange in my caravan,” went on Lawson, as if she had made no remark.
“Splendid!” The errant damsel clapped her hands. “And you will leave me at the lodge without requesting explanations?”
“On my honor!”
“Oh, you are—er—nice,” sighed his patient. “I don’t suppose we shall ever meet again. Mr.—Mr.—er—”
“Lawson. Richard Maxwell George Henry Lawson.”
“Quite a Royal string of names,” she commented, but did not offer information in return. “But as we won’t meet again, Mr. Lawson, I thank you.”
“Why won’t we—or, why can’t we—meet again?”
“Oh, because—because—because—”
“Three reasons. Go on.”
“No!” She became angry, and looked as tempting as a peach. “You are asking me questions.”
“You asked me questions,” he countered.
“It’s a woman’s privilege. And my ankle is hurting me while you stand there making fun of my sufferings.”
“Oh, no, no.” Dick was shocked, and came towards her. “I shall catch my horse at once, but you must let me take you into my caravan.”
“The horse is only a stone’s throw away,” said the lady, sharply; “you can put me in the caravan when you put the horse between the shafts.”
“Right ho!” Seeing that there was no arguing with her, Dick walked towards the path where he had chanced upon her so unexpectedly. Then he uttered an exclamation of astonishment and dismay. The horse had vanished, only the rope and the halter remaining.
“What is the matter?” called out the girl.
“The horse has escaped—wandered—disappeared. Choose your word.”
“Oh,” there was a distinct note of anxiety in her voice, “it must have slipped its halter.”
“Looks like it.” Lawson untied the rope from the birch tree and advanced towards the fire. “What about a horse thief? Anyone with you?” he shot a keen glance at her which she resented promptly.
“Certainly not,” was her wrathful reply. “I don’t go about with people who steal horses. How silly you are! Go away and catch the horse.”
“Sound advice, mademoiselle. But it will take time to hunt through this fairy wood—near Athens, you know. And you—” he lifted her up, quilt and all, in his strong arms with a promptitude which aroused resentment but not alarm.
“Why? Why? Why?” she babbled, feeling that she could trust him wholly.
“There may be—er—tramps about,” explained Dick, hoping that Selwin would not stumble too suddenly on his romance.
“Oh, well,” she sighed, and allowed him to carry her into the caravan, wrapped in the quilt and grasping the pillow. “Do hurry,” she implored, when he laid her gently on the bed.
“I’ll put a girdle round the earth in forty minutes,” answered Lawson in a gay tone. “Take the torch and don’t be frightened.”
Lawson was puzzled by the escape of the ancient steed. In his remarkably logical mind he was tolerably assured that the halter had been deliberately removed so that the animal might stray. But for what reason, and by whom? Severely as he questioned himself, while groping here and there in this cimmerian wood, he could find no plausible answer to these suggestions. And all the time he wandered, further and further away from the glade, from the caravan, and its precious occupant. The gloom was not altogether cimmerian, he found, when his eyes grew accustomed to the dimness, for there was a faint, luminous light lingering amongst the trees, and he managed to scramble along without any marked mishap. The distant clock, struck three-quarters. “Nearly eleven,” muttered Dick, treading cautiously through leagues—as it seemed—of unknown geography. “Damn the horse!”
At that very moment he heard crackling sounds as the beast pushed its way through the close undergrowth and sprang in the direction of the movement. As he did so there came to his ear, faint but distinct, the unmistakable noise indicating the discharge of a revolver. Lawson half-unconsciously promptly wheeled round to fight his way back to the glade. All on fire for rescue of the girl from some unknown danger, he plunged onward blindly like a bull, and brought his head violently into contact with a tree trunk. For the next fifteen minutes or so he took no further interest in life as he knew it.
Recovering his senses with a dull aching in his head, he ploughed through the underwood more cautiously towards the glade—reached it somehow, some time, and noted vaguely that the fire had died down to a smouldering glow. Up the caravan steps he went, flung open the caravan door, and plunged in. There was no answer to his call, and he dropped on his knees to explore, his hand coming into touch with the torch immediately. Clicking on the light he saw a woman lying on the bed, as he expected; but the torch light revealed another face. Dick gasped. The girl had disappeared. In her place was an elderly woman—a complete stranger. And she was dead—shot straight through the heart.
