Striding Folly by Dorothy L. Sayers Read Free Book Online Page A

rolled beneath his foot. It was a white chess-rook.
     
    The police surgeon said that Creech had been dead since about nine o’clock. It was proved that at eight-fifty he had set out towards the wicket gate to play chess with Mr Mellilow. And in the morning light the prints of Mr Mellilow’s goloshes were clear, leading down the gravelled path on the far side of the lawn, past the sun-dial and the fish-pond and through the sunk garden and so over the muddy field and the footbridge and up the slope to the Folly. Deep foot-prints they were and close together, such as a man might make who carried a monstrous burden. A good mile to the Folly and half of it uphill. The doctor looked inquiringly at Mr Mellilow’s spare form.
        ‘Oh, yes,’ said Mr Mellilow. ‘I could have carried him. It’s a matter of knack, not strength. You see—’ he blushed faintly, ‘I’m not really a gentleman. My father was a miller and I spent my whole boyhood carrying sacks. Only I was always fond of my books, and so I managed to educate myself and earn a little money. It would be silly to pretend I couldn’t have carried Creech. But I didn’t do it, of course.’
     

     
     
        ‘It’s unfortunate,’ said the superintendent, ‘that we can’t find no trace of this man Moses.’ His voice was the most unpleasant Mr Mellilow had ever heard – a sceptical voice with an edge like a saw. ‘He never come down to the Feathers, that’s a certainty. Potts never set eyes on him, let alone sent him up here with a tale about chess. Nor nobody saw no car neither. An odd gentleman this Mr Moses seems to have been. No footmarks to the front door? Well, it’s cobbles, so you wouldn’t expect none. That his glass of whisky by any chance, sir? . . . Oh? he wouldn’t have a drink, wouldn’t he? Ah! And you played two games of chess in this very room? Ah! very absorbing pursoot, so I’m told. You didn’t hear poor Mr Creech come up the garden?’
        ‘The windows were shut,’ said Mr Mellilow, ‘and the curtains drawn. And Mr Creech always walked straight over the grass from the wicket gate.’
        ‘H’m!’ said the superintendent. ‘So he come, or somebody come, right up on to the verandah and sneaks a pair of goloshes; and you and this Mr Moses are so occupied you don’t hear nothing.’
        ‘Come, Superintendent,’ said the Chief Constable, who was sitting on Mr Mellilow’s oak chest and looked rather uncomfortable. ‘I don’t think that’s impossible. The man might have worn tennis-shoes or something. How about fingerprints on the chessmen?’
        ‘He wore a glove on his right hand,’ said Mr Mellilow, unhappily. ‘I can remember that he didn’t use his left hand at all – not even when taking a piece.’
        ‘A very remarkable gentleman,’ said the superintendent again. ‘No fingerprints, no footprints, no drinks, no eyes visible, no features to speak of, pops in and out without leaving no trace – a kind of a vanishing gentleman.’ Mr Mellilow made a helpless gesture. ‘These the chessmen you was using?’ Mr Mellilow nodded, and the superintendent turned the box upside-down upon the board, carefully extending a vast enclosing paw to keep the pieces from rolling away. ‘Let’s see. Two big ’uns with crosses on the top and two big ’uns with spikes. Four chaps with split-open ’eads. Four ’orses. Two black ’uns – what d’you call these? Rooks, eh? Look more like churches to me. One white church – rook if you like. What’s gone with the other one? Or don’t these rook-affairs go in pairs like the rest?’
        ‘They must both be there,’ said Mr Mellilow. ‘He was using two white rooks in the end-game. He mated me with them . . . I remember  . . .’
        He remembered only too well. The dream, and the double castle moving to crush him. He watched the superintendent feeling in his pocket and suddenly knew that name of the terror that had flickered in and out of the