The Murder at Jex Farm | Page 3

saw the lanterns of three cyclists
coming towards me when I had got a few hundred yards from the
'Lion.' I never saw men travelling faster by night; they nearly got me
down in the road between them." "Did they speak to you?" "One cursed
me as he passed; I had gone near to spill him, he said. They never
slackened speed: I just felt the swish and wind of their machines as
they shaved past me." "You noticed nothing else? I mean on the road
home?" "Yes, I thought I heard some shots far away--poachers I
thought at the time--in Squire Watson's woods." "How many shots?"
"Three." " Close together?" "As close as I speak now: one--two--three."
"Was this long after you met the cyclists?" He took a moment to think.
"Come, Mr. Jex, you can't want time to answer a simple question?" "It
was some time before I met them." "How far might it have been from
the Lion' when you heard the three shots?" "A matter of half a mile."
"Then it was after you met the cyclists?" "No, it was before." "It was
after, for you told me just now you met them a few hundred yards, and
now you say you heard the shots when you were half a mile on your
way home. Half a mile is not a few hundred yards; half a mile is 880
yards." Mr. Jex seemed puzzled. "You are too sharp on a fellow," he
said. "I had need to be, Mr. Jex," I answered.
"Now, Mr. Jex," I said, "there is another point on which I am afraid I
must question you." "I guess what it is," said he, "go ahead. You mean
about me and Miss Judson?" "That is so, about Miss Judson and
yourself. You were engaged to her?" "I was." "Had the engagement
lasted long?" A month." "And she had been two months your mother's
guest at the farm?" "Going on for three." "And there was nothing to
stand in the way of your wishes?" "I don't understand what sort of thing
you mean?" "Well, any misunderstanding between you--quarrels, you
know." "Oh, lovers' quarrels! They don't amount to much, do they? We
had the usual number, I suppose." (This is a queer, indifferent sort of a
lover, I thought.) " Well, even a lovers' quarrel has a cause, I
suppose--and its mostly jealousy; perhaps there was some neighbour
you did not fancy the look of?" "God bless you, no! She didn't know

the neighbours--hardly." "Or some old London friend the young lady
may have had a liking for once?" "Couldn't be," said Jex positively.
"Because Mary only had one friend. She had been engaged to him, and
she threw him over. She fancied me better, you see. She told me all
about him. She told me everything, you know." "Ah, women always
do!" "They do when they care for a fellow," said Jex warmly. "Well,
perhaps they do, but you see, here's a mysterious crime, and I want to
find a motive for it." "Who could have a motive?" "Possibly a
disappointed rival--from London." "Why, man," said Jex, "I tell you it
couldn't be; the man I spoke of is in New Zealand--thousands of miles
away. I tell you the motive was robbery. Why, wasn't the girl's fold
watch taken?" "That might be a blind, Mr. Jex," said, I looking him
straight in the face: "it's a common trick, that." "Oh, nonsense; we all
agreed at the inquest it was robbery, and we fastened it on to those
three cyclists I saw at the 'Lion,' and coming back along the road, hot
foot, just in the nick of time to do the trick. Don't you go wasting your
time, Mr. Battle, over rivals, and rot of that sort!" I let my gentleman
run on, but I thought well presently to throw a little dash of cold water
over his cock-sureness.
"Mr. Jex," I said, "do you remember that at the inquest the county
police put in plaster casts of all the footprints found next morning
round about where the body had lain?" "Well, what if they did?" "I've
just compared those footprints with the bootprints of the inmates of this
house, and every single mark corresponds with the boots worn by the
three labourers at the Farm, and--by yourself." This staggered him a bit.
"Of course," he said, "we made these marks when we carried the body
in." "I know that," I said. "And one country boot," said Jex, "is just as
like another as one pea is like another." "Not quite so like as that. But
Mr. Jex, did you ever know a cyclist to ride his machine in hobnailed
boots? So you see, the murderer could not be one of your bicyclists."
Jex kept