Shroud of Darkness

by E. C. R. Lorac

  “Well—it’s up to you,” said the sergeant non-committally.

  4

  Albert Hodgeson was in the bar, putting things to rights before opening time, when Reeves knocked on the door. Old Charlie Tucker had got the door on the chain, for he had just finished cleaning the floor. Hodgeson went to the door and snapped out: “Now, then, what’s your game? You know the opening time, don’t you?”

  “I should,” said Reeves, flicking open his wallet. “C.I.D. inspector. Any objection to my coming inside?”

  “No—and no need to ’ave,” replied Hodgeson dourly. He loosed the chain, let Reeves in to the neat, well-cleaned bar, fastened the doors behind them, and waited.

  “Just a matter of corroborating evidence,” said Reeves. “An alibi, if you like to put it that way. I want to know what time Mr. Barney O’Flynn was here last night: when he arrived and when he left.”

  It was a simple-sounding gambit, but Reeves knew just the problem he had presented to the publican, assuming that the latter did know Barney O’Flynn. Reeves, sceptical of psychologists’ methods and jargon, used one of their most reliable methods himself—the time reaction. If Hodgeson did not know O’Flynn, his answer would come out pat, in a split-second “Never heard of him.” But if Hodgeson did know O’Flynn, he was bound to play for time; never let a customer down would be an inviolable rule in a joint like this one, and Reeves, cunning in all the lawbreakers’ manners of thought, had chosen his gambit with extreme care. He knew at once that his long shot had come off, knew it with the certainty of experience.

  “Mr. O’Flynn,” repeated the publican slowly. “Is ’e a big ’eavy chap—grey ’air and grey moustache?”

  “You should know,” snapped Reeves, “or don’t you? If not, say so.”

  “Now you look ’ere, and don’t be so smart,” parried Hodgeson. “ ’Ow many customers do you think I ’ave in ’ere of an evening?”

  “I don’t know and I don’t care,” retorted Reeves. “I’ve asked you a plain question. If you don’t know the answer, say so. Perhaps you weren’t here yourself last night.”

  “No perhaps about it. I was ’ere all the time we was open, but I don’t keep my eyes on the door checking the times customers comes in and out.”

  “That’s all right,” said Reeves easily. “You’ve answered my question, haven’t you. You can’t call O’Flynn to mind because you don’t know him by sight.”

  He was driving the other into a corner, and he waited for the next move.

  “I didn’t say so,” retorted Hodgeson. “Likely I know him as well as I know a few ’undred others, but me memory for names isn’t what it was. If you’d remind me what ’e looks like, I might be able to oblige. I never forget a face, I’ll .say that.”

  “That’s fine,” said Reeves, smelling his way along like a hound on a doubtful trail. “What was the row about?” he shot out. It was always worth trying, that one, and it often worked. He was watching Hodgeson’s eyes: they were light-coloured eyes, easier to judge than dark ones, because you could see the pupils dilate or contract. When a man was rattled, the pupils of his eyes often contracted: Reeves knew that, though he didn’t call it a nervous reflex.

  “What yer talkin’ about?” demanded Hodgeson.

  “A row,” said Reeves promptly. “Barney O’Flynn and that little argument he had. Now you needn’t go telling me you don’t have any fighting in your bar. I know that already. But there was an argument.”

  “Dozens of ’em,” said Hodgeson. “What do you reckon this is? An ’ome for deaf mutes? If you’ve ever been in a bar before, you ought to know a bar’s a place where chaps get their opinions off their chests.”

  “I didn’t come here for opinions,” said Reeves crisply. “I’ve given you the chance to give a straight answer to straight questions, and you haven’t taken the chance.”

  “I’m not going to give no answers unless I know who I’m talking about, and that’s straight enough,” said Hodgeson. “Maybe I do know this O’Flynn, maybe I don’t.”

  “That’s O.K. by me,” said Reeves, pulling out his notebook: “You don’t mind signing a statement, do you? Say if we put it like this: ‘I don’t remember the name Barney O’Flynn. If he’s a customer here I can’t call him to mind. I can’t say if he was here last night or not.’ That’s fair enough, isn’t it?”

  But Albert Hodgeson wasn’t going to let his customer down; that word “alibi” often worked wonders. Reeves had succeeded in implanting in the publican’s mind a belief that O’Flynn had given Hodgeson as a reference for an alibi, and Hodgeson wasn’t going to sign any statement which would leave O’Flynn in the lurch.

  It was at this moment that old Charlie Tucker chimed in. He had been on his knees all this time, assiduously polishing the brass plating that reinforced the bottom of the door.

  “If you’ll pardon me butting in, boss, Mr. O’Flynn’s that big gent wot beat Jamie Potts at darts. Irishman, Mr. O’Flynn is. No mistakin’ that. ’E was in last night around nine and ’e stopped till closin’ time. It was Mr. O’Flynn was talkin’ to you about dirt-track racing.”

  Hodgeson responded immediately. “Why couldn’t you say so before, Charlie? You ’eard this detective officer asking questions, didn’t you?”

  “ ’E wasn’t asking ’em of me, boss. But I tell you what: you ask Mr. Baines when ’e comes in this evening. ’E’ll remember, Mr. Baines will.”

  Reeves heaved a good deep histrionic sigh. “The time you chaps waste,” he said. “D’you think I’d have wasted my time coming here if I didn’t know that O’Flynn had been here? I ask for corroboration of a plain statement—we always look for independent witnesses, you know—and you argue around in circles like a mothers’ meeting.” He turned to old Charlie. “Now you seem to have your wits about you. What about a quiet young chap who sat in the corner, there? Been in several times before: knows a bit about the dogs. Thin, weedy-looking chap, not much colour, unhealthy-looking cuss.”

  “Arr . . . can’t tell you who ’e is: they call ’im ’Enery,” said Charlie. “Quiet, as you say. But ’e went out earlier. I do know that. I’d been meaning to ask ’is opinion about Black Velvet. That’s a likely dawg, I’m told.”

  Reeves’s quick brain recognised at once that Charlie thought it quite safe to be forthcoming about ’Enery. ’Enery wasn’t really a regular, not one of those patrons whose interests must be accorded priority.

  “Never noticed ’im meself, but being be’ind the bar all the evening I don’t see as much as Charlie does,” said Hodgeson amiably. “Tell you what, Inspector. If you’ll look in about closing time this evening, after I’ve had a word with Mr. Baines and some of the regulars, I ought to be able to tell you just when that Mr. O’Flynn was ’ere last night. No unpleasantness, I ’ope?”

  “Depends . . .” said Reeves judicially. “Well, thanks for your help. I’ll look in later.”

  Reeves left the Whistling Pig with his brain racing at top speed. He hadn’t learnt a great deal, but what he had learnt seemed likely to fit in the jigsaw puzzle he was devising.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  WHEN MACDONALD left Yelverton to drive up to the moor (everybody spoke of Dartmoor thus—the moor) it was a clear, cold, grey morning. There was no sunshine and the uniformly grey sky was pale, as though the clouds or overcast were very high up. It was a colourless morning: even the meadows and pastures of the valley looked wan, very different from the vibrant emerald of springtime, and as he mounted towards the moor the world became more and more a study in monochrome. The withered bents of the upland grassland were ashen, the occasional thorns etched black against the sky, the stone outcrops dark, the withered heather sepia. And yet, to a Londoner’s eye, it was all incredibly clean: low-toned, admittedly, but utterly different from the drab murk left by London’s famous fog.

  As he drove, Macdonald’s mind dwelt on the anomaly of a boy who had been bred in this wild, silent moorland being attacked and nearly done to death in the grime and clamour and
rush around a London terminus. The further he drove into the uplands, the more anomalous the whole case seemed to become: here was he, Macdonald, pursuing one line among the tors and crags of Dartmoor, remote from any sign or token of human habitation, while Reeves pursued another line in the same case among closely packed humanity in the squalor of back streets, in yards that ran cheek by jowl with the permanent way, in a pub of ill-repute which backed on to slums of very evil repute. Macdonald did not believe in chance, so far as this case was concerned: there was a connecting link, somewhere, between the moor and the back streets of Paddington.

  The road leading out of Yelverton had been a good main road, but after a few miles Macdonald had turned off on to a secondary road, mounting steadily towards the moor, then on to a track which could hardly be called a road at all. Before setting out, he had obtained a large-scale Ordnance Survey map and consulted with the Yelverton police about the best route to take, for it was plain enough from the map that there was a diversity of tracks over the moor, some better, some worse, which approached Moorcock Farm. He pulled up at one point and studied his map again, wondering if he were heading for trouble: the track he was following was steep and narrow, and seemed to be deteriorating rather than improving. There was no room to reverse and no room to pass another vehicle and the thought of having to back down the steep bends was exceedingly unattractive. He decided to go on as long as his car would co-operate: there were no road signs and the rise facing him was certainly as steep as anything he had seen in Great Britain. Very slowly and protestingly the car took the improbable gradient and Macdonald was able to see “over the bump” to a level and a dip. In the dip were the stone buildings and lichened roofs of an ancient upland farmstead: there were wind-bent thorn trees almost crouching over the stone walls and some stunted pine trees, swaying and soughing in the wind.

  The rough track led through a couple of pastures, walled and gated, into the cobbled fold yard, and Macdonald realised he must have taken a wrong turn which had brought him to the back entrance of the farm. As he got out again to close the last of the gates, he saw a woman’s figure standing in the doorway of the farm. She was staring at him—as well she might. Visitors must be rare in this place, but visitors who came by car up the track Macdonald had negotiated must be rarer still.

  He walked across the fold yard and called good morning, adding: “This is Moorcock Farm, isn’t it? I think I must have taken the wrong turn.”

  The woman was young—about thirty, Macdonald guessed, dark-haired and dark-eyed, with a high colour and beetling black brows: she was vivid and sturdy, but more disposed to scowl than smile.

  “Yes, ’tis Moorcock. There’s many try that road in summer, but few gets up it. My dad was always getting the horses out to tow some motorist over the top, for turn you can’t. What is it you’d be wanting?”

  “I came to see Mrs. Greville. I’m told she’s not been well, but I should like to see her if she feels able to talk.”

  “She’s not fit to see no one,” said the other. “If you’d tell me what it’s about——” She broke off as someone came up to the door just behind her, a much older woman, this, grey-haired and pallid, with a shawl over her bent shoulders.

  “What is it, Margie? Did the gentleman ask for me?”

  “Oh, Mother, go back, do, and sit by the fire. I’ll see to it, whatever ’tis. You’ll catch your death coming out in this wind.”

  “If he asked for me, why, let him come in and say what’s brought him. I’ve still got my wits left, and ’tis no sort of manners to keep a visitor standing out in the yard. You step inside, sir, into the warm.”

  She turned back into the house, her voice serene and resolute, in contrast with the higher pitch of her daughter’s scolding voice. Margie glowered at Macdonald.

  “She’s not fit to be up and about, but she’s that obstinate I dare not cross her: ’tis her heart. Now don’t you go bothering her. If ’tis business, I can settle it.”

  “I’ll be very careful,” said Macdonald quietly.

  He went into the low-beamed kitchen, where the smell of wood smoke and peat mingled with a fragrance of herbs and apples and heather honey. It was a dark room, for the windows were tiny: there was a great open chimney, where logs smouldered on a huge hearthstone and a kettle hung above them on a crane.

  The grey-haired woman stood by the kitchen table, one hand resting on it, and Macdonald said:

  “I’m sorry to bother you when you’re poorly, Mrs. Greville.”

  “Nay, I’m not that far gone I can’t face what I’ve got to face,” she said, and her voice was still serene. “There’s a fire in my little parlour, if you’ll kindly step in. Margie’s been spoiling me, bidding me sit by the parlour fire with my feet up, but bless you, I can’t abide sitting doing nothing. You follow me, sir, and mind the beams, the doors are low.”

  She led the way across a dark, narrow passage into a cheerful little room with a chintzy paper on the walls and a bright fire glowing in a modern grate. There were pictures on the walls and many photographs on the mantelpiece. One was a photo of a boy in battle dress, and Macdonald knew at once who it was. He had only seen part of “Waterloo’s” bandaged face, but he recognised it. Mrs. Greville went and sat in her armchair by the fire and looked up at the tall stranger, her face almost ashen. She saw that his eyes were on the boy’s photograph, and she said at once:

  “ ’Tis about my boy you’ve come, about Dick.”

  “Yes, it is,” responded Macdonald. “He’s in hospital, in London. He had an accident in the fog. You’ll have heard about the thick fog all over London?”

  She shook her head. “No. We don’t get a paper up here, and the wireless went wrong, but ’twas thick over the moor for days. Is he badly hurt, sir—dangerous bad?”

  “He was pretty badly hurt, but the surgeon and nurses were very pleased with the way he’s getting on,” replied Macdonald. “His head was injured and he was unconscious when I saw him, so he couldn’t give any account of himself.”

  “And you came all this way to tell me?” she asked wonderingly, and the gratitude in her voice gave Macdonald a pang. Then suddenly she added, “But, sit you down, sir. I’m forgetting my manners, leaving you standing like that. You see, I’d worried about him. He’s not like other boys, is Dick, and I knew he was troubled. . . .”

  Macdonald sat down opposite to her and she spoke again, in a voice hardly above a whisper. “He’s not dead? You’re not——”

  “No. He’s alive, all right,” said Macdonald. “I telephoned to the hospital before I came out this morning. He’s still unconscious, but they said he was doing well.”

  She gave a great sigh, but before he could speak again she said: “You haven’t got to worry about me, sir. I’ve been poorly with my heart, but I’m better now, and I can face anything now you’ve told me he’s getting on as he should.” She paused, and then said slowly: “You’ll know about him—about Dick?”

  “No . . . I don’t know anything about him,” replied Macdonald. “I want you to tell me about him if you can, because he couldn’t tell me himself, and the hospital wants to know about him.”

  She accepted this without question and gazed across at Macdonald, and then right beyond him, looking out of the little casement window to the grey moor.

  “We adopted him, me and my husband,” she said slowly. “When nobody claimed him and they couldn’t find anything about him, they let us adopt him. It was all legal and right, and he’s our boy, with our name. You mind what happened in Plymouth, sir, in the war, the spring of 1941, ’twas—the bombing.”

  “I remember,” said Macdonald. “I was posted there from London with the Civil Defence: that was after the second night.”

  She nodded and still looked out of the little window. “We was farming up on Roborough Down then—you’ll mind Roborough? ’Twas safe enough there, up in the hills, but we could see the sky over Plymouth and hear it all. Dear life, ’twas a thing you could never forget . . . the fires an
d the bombing, the whole place ablaze, the petrol stores burning, exploding . . . no one could tell what ’twas like who didn’t see and hear it. It made my heart ache, the horror of it. And ’twas the day after, Jack—that was my husband—he was out to see to the lambing ewes up near Rob Tor. He had a shelter there, like the shepherds always have, and a rough bed with sacks and some bundles of hay for when he was out at night. And ’twas there he found Dick, curled up asleep on the sacks, his clothes all scorched and burnt off him. Dear life, he must have run out of that hell that Plymouth was, run like a frightened beast. . . . Can you think of it, a small boy running like a mad thing till he dropped, and fell asleep among the ewes up there on Roborough?”

  Macdonald sat very still and quiet. She didn’t want an answer—and there was nothing to say. She met his eyes and seemed satisfied that he had understood, and went on more slowly: “Jack, he picked him up and set him across his shoulder as he would have a sick lamb, and he brought him to me. ‘He musta run out of that blazing hell,’ he said, ‘run and run, poor little chap, all scorched and black.’ Well, I put him to bed and cared for him. You can guess what it was, with all the doctors driven to death down there—and he wasn’t hurt, except for his hands and face being scorched, and his poor legs all tom and bleeding. He just slept and slept. I fed him as you’d feed a baby and he slept again, and when Doctor came—old Dr. Carson, that was—he said: ‘You look after him, just as you’re doing now. You can do more for him than anyone. It’s shock, poor little lad.’ And when he woke up, he couldn’t speak. He was just dumb.” She stopped again, not waiting for an answer, but immersed in memory, as though she were standing again by the bedside of a small boy who couldn’t—or wouldn’t—speak.

  “It came back, gradual like, his speech,” she went on at last. “At first it was just yes and no. He soon got his strength back, and he ran round after my husband and helped with the lambs, but it was weeks before he really talked. And he couldn’t remember anything: he couldn’t even tell us his name. It was as though a curtain had come down and shut everything out.”