The Markenmore Mystery by J.S. Fletcher

Early in the morning of that day, Mr. Fransemmery, in common with the rest of the Markenmore people, heard of the strange disappearance of Baron von Eckhardstein, and like many of them, he joined in a search for the missing man. Since his coming to The Warren, Mr. Fransemmery had become minutely acquainted with his immediate surroundings, and he knew of many nooks and corners of the woods and downs wherein a stranger might easily have met with an accident. There were queer places in that neighbourhood; two thousand years ago, the folk who were here before the Romans had quarried the hill-sides, scooped out caves and pit-dwellings, and made long lines of fortifications and trenches. These primeval works, grown over in course of time, were danger-traps for the unwary who wandered through the backwoods or crossed the rough, unfrequented parts of the uplands; more than once, in Mr. Fransemmery's short experience of Markenmore, he had known of man or horse falling into some unexpected cavity. Some such accident as this he conceived to have been possible in the present instance, and when he heard of von Eckhardstein's disappearance, he took his stoutest walking-stick, some lunch in his pocket, and a small flask of brandy and water, and set out to prospect. In the course of the day he met many folk who were similarly engaged. Mrs. Tretheroe was so much concerned about the fate of her guest, and so convinced that evil had befallen him, that she had pressed into service every villager who could be spared from his proper and usual labours, and had offered a handsome reward for success. But when eventide came again, and Mr. Fransemmery, weary with tramping up hill and down dale, returned to his own fireside, no success had materialized; Baron von Eckhardstein, as far as Markenmore folk were concerned, had vanished.

Mr. Fransemmery sat down to his solitary dinner, puzzled and wondering. He had thought of little else than the Markenmore problem since it was first presented to him, and the more he thought, the more he was bewildered. He had listened with care and patience, and, he hoped, with understanding, to the evidence put before himself and his fellow-jurymen, and he was bound to confess that he had made little out of it. What seemed to him much the most important fact of that evidence was the affair of the briar-wood pipe. There was no doubt that that pipe had been left on the supper-table at the Sceptre by one of the two men who were there with Guy Markenmore. There was no doubt that Grimsdale produced it at the inquest, passed it round, and left it lying on the table; there was no doubt-none whatever-that it was abstracted from that table between the moment of adjoining and the moment wherein the officious newspaper reporter asked to see it. What was to be deduced from that? In Mr. Fransemmery's opinion one certain conclusion-the owner of that pipe, the man who had left it at the Sceptre, was present at the inquest, and had kept silence. Who was he? Mr. Fransemmery had asked himself that question a hundred times, and got no answer. He was unaware of Blick's doings and discoveries, and had only his own knowledge to go on. But he felt sure of one thing-the owner of the pipe had purloined it from the solicitors' table of the temporary court in the old dining-hall so that it could not be used in evidence against him. Once more-who was he?