‘Jim Hayes himself, a chap of about forty, his wife, and five kids from round sixteen downwards. And Jim’s mother lives with them. She’s a widow. Jim took on the farm when his dad died, five years back I think it was.’
By way of comments on the advantages of continuity in running a farm, Pollard elicited the information that Jim was a good farmer and not afraid of work. Mr Ridley had thought the world of him and his dad. After this there seemed little point in pursuing the subject further, and he asked if Bill Manley could be summoned to go up to the hut.
‘We’d like a first-hand account of exactly how he found that bag of pictures this morning. There’s no need for you to come, Mr Basing. We’ve taken up enough of your time as it is. By the way, have you ever seen this man in the village, especially during the last few weeks?’
Tom Basing took the glossy photograph of an unprepossessing thug from Brixton, studied it carefully and shook his head.
‘If a chap looking like this’d been around the village, I’d have heard about it right enough,’ he said emphatically.
Pollard carefully returned the photograph to an envelope which he replaced in his wallet.
‘One more thing,’ he said. ‘After you had paid in the money from the sale of plants to Mr Peck on Saturday evening, what did you do next?’
‘I went off home.’
‘Which way did you go?’
‘Down the steps to the car park, and down the drive to the village.’
‘This next question is rather important, Mr Basing,’ Pollard told him. ‘Take your time. How many cars were still in the car park when you went through?’
‘None at all,’ Tom Basing replied without hesitation. ‘I don’t need any time to answer that one. I’d have noticed if there was any. It would’ve meant there was still folk around in the gardens. We don’t admit visitors after half past five, but we don’t clear ’em out either, more’s the pity. You never know what they might be up to, pinching the plants and suchlike.’
Asked to call Bill Manley, he went to the door of the greenhouse and gave another powerful bellow, under cover of which Pollard commiserated with Toye on the exploding of his idea of an escape car having been left in the park.
Bill Manley emerged from a shed and advanced reluctantly.
‘Take these gentlemen from Scotland Yard up top,’ Basing ordered, ‘and tell them what they wants to know. And when they’ve done with you, get that fence finished and come back here. I’m off home to get into working clothes, but I’ll soon be back.’
Pollard took an encouraging line. ‘Come on, Bill. You lead the way up, but don’t go too fast. We’re twice your age, and Londoners into the bargain.’
The boy grinned broadly and headed in the direction of the woods. Behind the courtyard and the old stables at the back of Fairlynch Manor the hillside rose sharply. They passed under some great beeches just breaking into fragile green leaf, tramping over a thick carpet of last year’s red-gold leaves. At intervals a stony track was visible, rising steeply and often disappearing under further drifts of dead leaves and conifer needles. Pollard and Toye scrutinised the ground carefully, while realising the virtual impossibility of finding recognisable traces of anyone who had walked over it six days earlier. Bill Manley watched them with fascinated interest, his face bright pink from the exertion of the rapid climb. Finally the gradient eased. The track bore left through a group of silver birches, beyond which a small wooden shed came in sight. It was very quiet. In the silence and sense of remoteness Pollard had an odd feeling of contact with the man who had come this way furtively and urgently in the dead hours of the previous Sunday morning, hurrying over the moonlit ground flecked with shadows to jettison his burden... Determination suddenly possessed him. Damn it all, the chap had come this way and was solid flesh and therefore traceable... He realised that Bill Manley was staring at him.
‘Tell us exactly what you did up here this morning, old man,’ he said encouragingly.
Helped out by a few questions the boy gave a clear account of his doings. He had been sent up to mend the fence soon after nine. After taking a look at the damage, he had gone to the shed to fetch a coil of wire. No, he hadn’t gone right in, just opened the door and stretched out his hand for the wire which was hanging on a nail. He had got on well with the job, and about quarter past ten felt he’d earned a break and a fag. This time he had gone right inside the shed to get out of the wind for lighting up, and it was then that he had seen the black polythene bag in the dark corner by the door, and given it a kick, not meaning any harm.
‘That’s O.K.,’ Pollard told him. ‘I should probably have done the same myself. Can you see the Manor Farm buildings from up here?’
‘Bit further along you can,’ Bill Manley replied, and led the way to the spot where a fallen branch had been pulled clear of the partly repaired fence. A spade, a wooden mallet and lengths of wire were lying around, but Pollard’s attention was instantly caught by a stile.
‘Do many people come this way?’ he asked.
Bill Manley’s confusion spoke for itself, and Pollard grinned.
‘I suppose you meet up with your girlfriend here in working hours? Does she come up from the farm?’
‘Thass right,’ the boy admitted. ‘Susie Hayes, she’s my girl. It ain’t often we meets ’ere: jus’ in an’ out, school ’oliday times mostly, when she’s ’ome.’
‘Do people use the stile as a short cut between Manor Farm and Spireford village?’
‘I ain’t never seen none. ’Twould be trespassing on the Manor grounds, see?’
Pollard reflected that anyone who had explored the woods would know of the stile’s existence. With Toye he examined it carefully, but they failed to find any signs of its having been crossed recently, either on the steps or on the ground on either side.
‘Well, that’s about the length of it,’ he said at last as he straightened up. ‘Thanks for your help, Bill. You’d better carry on with the fence or you’ll have Mr Basing after you. Here’s something to buy Susie a Coke next time you go out. We’re just going to have a look at the shed, and then we’ll be off. ’
Conscious of being barely out of earshot, they talked in low voices as they stood in front of the small wooden building.
‘No need for the chap to have gone inside,’ Toye said. ‘He’d only got to open the door by flipping up the hook, and chuck the bag into the corner.’
Pollard agreed, but they examined the floor closely with the help of a torch. The concrete surface had a thin covering of dust and earth. This had been recently trodden, but the prints were too confused for any to be clearly discernible.
‘Well, one thing X didn’t do was to spend the rest of Saturday night here,’ Pollard said, after a further exhaustive search. ‘At any rate we can be reasonably sure of that. Let’s go down. I hate muttering like this.’
With a parting wave to Bill Manley, who was tackling the repair of the fence in a half-hearted way with an eye on the shed, they went down the path and round the Manor to their car.
Pollard looked at his watch.
‘All this is taking up a lot of time, but I think we must go along to the farm. We can scout round at the road junction and see if there’s anywhere handy where a get-away car could have been hidden. We can ask questions about barking dogs or whatever in the middle of Saturday night, and sounds of a car engine starting up. And we can also size up Hayes. He’s nicely situated for the job, you know. Has he got it in for Heritage of Britain? Perhaps he wants to buy the farm and they won’t play. There may not have been a car on the job at all. There are several pointers to X being a local, don’t you think?’
‘Meaning detailed knowledge of the layout of the Manor and the grounds?’ Toye asked.
‘Yes, and of what was in the exhibition.’
Toye sat in silent consideration of these ideas.
‘Come to that,’ he said at last, ‘the Gilmores are local people, and so’s the artist chap Rossiter. He lives near, doesn’t he, in
an old mill or something.’
‘But all that lot were at the party on Saturday night, so they couldn’t have hidden in the house during the afternoon when it was open. Gilmore’s return from dropping Peck here within minutes of dropping Alix at the lodge is vouched for by Mrs Ridley and Alix herself, and Mrs Gilmore says her husband was back at home by eleven. Rossiter is an artist of some standing, and the idea of his trying to steal anything as difficult to dispose of as the Ridley portrait just doesn’t make sense to me. It isn’t even as though it’s the sort of masterpiece that he might want to gloat over in secret. On paper Hayes is a much better candidate. Let’s go along and look at him.’
They turned right at the drive entrance, along the road running north from Spireford. On their right was the wall enclosing the main Fairlynch gardens, and on the left was the walled and detached water garden. Just beyond this they came to a white gate which was propped open by a large stone. It carried a board inscribed ‘The Old Mill’. A rough unsurfaced road ran alongside a hedge, past the remains of a haystack under a tarpaulin, in the direction of a small group of buildings by the river. Toye was critical as he drove on.
‘Shake the guts out of any car rattling it over a surface like that day in and day out,’ he commented. ‘You’d think a well-known artist could run to a bit of asphalt.’
‘He probably never thinks of it,’ Pollard replied. ‘Easy. We’re coming up to the farm turning.’
They prospected. The road to Manor Farm had been surfaced. It had open fields on either side, and ran dead straight between wire fences to the farm buildings. It offered no cover whatever to a waiting vehicle. The main road for some distance on either side had neither gateways nor side turnings where a car could have been concealed.
‘Not conclusive, of course, but definitely not suited for lurking inconspicuously to pick a chap up,’ Pollard said, as Toye turned and headed back in the direction of Manor Farm, agreeing reluctantly. It was obviously a going concern. Modern buildings in good repair flanked a solid stone-built house approached through a small flower garden full of daffodils and wallflowers. A continuous bass rumble of mooing came from the cowyard which was a shifting sea of black and white.
‘Milking,’ Pollard said. ‘We shan’t be popular.’
As he got out of the car, however, a short stocky man in a white overall emerged from the milking shed and came purposefully towards him. Shrewd eyes in a weather-beaten face summed him up.
‘Mr Hayes? I’m sorry to come at an awkward time.’
‘Hayes is the name. I reckon you’ll be from Scotland Yard about the trouble up at the Manor. I can’t tell you any more than I told the constable from Wellchester.’
‘All the same, it’s a help to get things at first hand, Mr Hayes. We won’t keep you long.’
‘Maybe we’d better step inside, then. I’ve got a bit of an office for all the paperwork the government puts on us these days.’
A small but efficient office had been partitioned off in a building used for the storage of feedstuffs. The three men fitted in with some difficulty, and Pollard responded to Mr Hayes’ brisk approach with equal conciseness. In a few minutes he had learnt that the farmer had been up until four o’clock on Sunday morning with a calving cow in difficulties. Mr Howlett, a vet from Wellchester, had been summoned by telephone and arrived soon after eleven on Saturday evening. He had stayed until three, when they reckoned the cow had pulled through and the calf was O.K. Mrs Hayes had been up all the time, providing hot drinks and snacks and anything else that was wanted. The dogs had been around, a bit bothered by all the fuss, and they’d have raised hell if they’d heard anyone coming down from the top, or a car starting up at the end of the road.
Pollard recognised conclusive evidence, even if Mr Howlett of Wellchester would have to be contacted for confirmation as a routine measure. He brought the conversation round to the tragedy at Fairlynch. Mr Hayes suddenly became human on the subject of the Ridley family and Francis Peck.
‘It seemed like the end of the world to us the day Mr Ridley told me he was making over the estate to Heritage of Britain. But if you’d searched the country from north to south you couldn’t’ve found a nicer chap than poor Mr Peck. Knew his job, and knew I knows mine, an’ we got on like a house afire. Now he’s gone, and what we’ll get in his place, God only knows,’ he concluded gloomily.
‘Well, that’s the end of the Hayes lead all right,’ Pollard said as they drove along the farm road. ‘He couldn’t have done it on grounds of practical possibility, or on psychological grounds either if I know anything at all about human nature. I can’t wait to get back to Wellchester, but I think there’s one more job we’d better get done first which ties up with this dumping of the pictures.’
‘Mrs Ridley and the girl?’ Toye asked.
‘Yes. I’d like to question them myself about possible footsteps past the lodge in the middle of Saturday night, or a car starting up. Mrs R. has obviously been mixed up in funny business of some sort, you know!’
A transformed Katharine Ridley opened the door of the lodge, relaxed, confident and full of vitality. In a flash Pollard realised that she had simply reverted to her normal self. The question which immediately formed in his mind was answered by the copy of The Monitor on the sitting room table, open at the page carrying the report of the fatal road accident near Brynsworthy. As he exchanged civilities he wondered what she had been blackmailed about by the man in the duffle coat.
‘Do sit down,’ she was saying. ‘Alix will be back any time now for her tea. Can I give you both a cup?’
Pollard declined politely. ‘There’s been a surprising development, Mrs Ridley,’ he told her, watching her closely as he spoke. ‘Some, if not all of the pictures that were stolen on Saturday night have been found.’
Her reaction was to stare at him blankly for a second, as if trying to get this information into context. Then astonishment came into her face. ‘But how splendid!’ she exclaimed. ‘Did you and Inspector Toye find them? Where were they?’
‘I’m afraid we can’t claim any of the credit,’ Pollard replied. ‘They were found by one of the under-gardeners, Bill Manley, when he went up to mend the fence at the top of the woods this morning. They were in a black polythene bag in the shed up there.’
‘But what on earth was the point of taking the pictures and then leaving them practically on the doorstep?’
‘That’s one of the things we want to find out. Another is where the thief went afterwards. After making enquiries we’re satisfied that it’s very unlikely that he went down to Manor Farm and out to the main road that way. An alternative escape route would be to return on his tracks, and come down the drive past this house. I know both you and Miss Parr have already told Inspector Rendell that you didn’t hear anything unusual during the night, but I want you to go over the ground again, and see if anything however small comes to your minds. You were unwell, weren’t you? Did you have a wakeful night?’
Pollard got the impression that the reference to her being unwell was uncongenial. She quickly shut her eyes as if to help her to concentrate.
‘No,’ she said, opening them again. ‘I slept like a log. Alix gave me hot milk and whisky before she went out, and I took two aspirins. I was soon drowsy, and heard the Gilmore car come back and drop her, and didn’t rouse myself to talk when she came into my room. She went away again, and I heard the car coming back and turning out into the road. The next thing was waking up and hearing Tom Basing hammering on the door... Here’s Alix.’
The front door opened and closed again.
‘We’re back,’ a young voice called, and Terry erupted into the sitting room. On catching sight of Pollard and Toye he stopped dead, a front paw raised clear of the ground and ears pricked.
‘Friends, Terry,’ Katharine told him firmly. ‘As long as people are with us he’s satisfied. It was finding you on your own in the house that set him off the other day, Inspector Toye... Alix, here’s Superintendent Pollard.’
> Alix came to the door, slightly dishevelled and muddy.
‘Hallo!’ she said, smiling at him. ‘I’d better just take these shoes off before I come in. We had a colossal walk, Gran. I think I’ve worn Terry out.’
The terrier slumped into his basket, reassured but keeping a watchful eye on Pollard and Toye. Alix reappeared and sank on to a chair, and Pollard reported the finding of the missing pictures once again.
‘How absolutely super!’ she exclaimed. ‘Is one of them the thing of the Spire that Lydia Gilmore bought? I do hope so.’
Pollard explained that he had not yet examined the pictures because they had to be gone over for fingerprints before being handled anymore.
‘But it’s simply bonkers, though, isn’t it? I mean, why bother to take them if you were going to dump them again almost at once?’
Pollard replied in the same terms as he had to the identical comment from Katharine Ridley, and again brought the conversation round to the events of Saturday evening.
‘Try to remember every little detail from the time when the party at Mr and Mrs Gilmore’s broke up,’ he said. ‘You see, it looks as though an escape car may have been parked somewhere near here. Did you happen to notice a car in a gateway, for instance, as you were driven back?’
To his relief this improbable suggestion passed muster without question.
‘I’m sure there wasn’t,’ Alix said. ‘At least, I couldn’t absolutely swear to it, I suppose, as we were talking, but I’d have noticed, I think. Have you asked Hugo Rossiter? He’d gone on ahead.’
‘Was he much ahead of you?’ Pollard asked.
‘Oh, no. Lydia wanted to send Gran some food that would come in for Professor Chilmark’s lunch the next day, so there wouldn’t be so much to do, as she — Gran, I mean — wasn’t feeling well. So we took a few minutes longer to stow them in the boot with a bottle of champagne to zip Gran up. Malcolm dashed down to the cellar for it, and then we started off. They’re both awfully generous.’ On arrival at the lodge Francis Peck had helped transport the food and champagne to the door of the lodge, and seen Alix into the house. She described ‘shushing’ Terry who had been waiting on the mat, and who showed a disposition to bark with excitement at her return. Then she had tiptoed into her grandmother’s room, found her asleep and crept out again.
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