Murder in Midsummer

by Cecily Gayford

  Vicky’s eyes seemed far away.

  ‘I don’t remember, really. I was only a child, you see. I didn’t understand. I hadn’t developed the power for myself then.’

  ‘What power?’ H.M. asked sharply.

  ‘To dematerialise,’ said Vicky. ‘Of course.’

  In that warm, sun-dusted lane, between the hawthorn hedges, the car jolted over a rut. Crockery rattled.

  ‘Uh-huh. I see,’ observed H.M. without inflection. ‘And where do you go, my wench, when you dematerialise?’

  ‘Into a strange country. Through a little door. You wouldn’t understand. Oh, you are such Philistines!’ moaned Vicky. Then, with a sudden change of mood, she leaned forward and her whole physical allurement flowed again towards Bill Sage. ‘You wouldn’t like me to disappear, would you, Bill?’

  (Easy! Easy!)

  ‘Only’, said Bill, with a sort of wild gallantry, ‘if you promised to reappear again straightaway.’

  ‘Oh, I should have to do that.’ Vicky sat back. She was trembling. ‘The power wouldn’t be strong enough. But even a poor little thing like me might be able to teach you a lesson. Look there!’

  And she pointed ahead.

  On their left, as the lane widened, stretched the ten-acre gloom of what is fancifully known as Goblin Wood. On their right lay a small lake, on private property and therefore deserted.

  The cottage – set well back into a clearing of the wood so as to face the road, screened from it by a line of beeches – was in fact a bungalow of rough-hewn stone, with a slate roof. Across the front of it ran a wooden porch. It had a seedy air, like the long, yellow-green grass of its front lawn. Bill parked the car at the side of the road, since there was no driveway.

  ‘It’s a bit lonely, ain’t it?’ demanded H.M. His voice boomed out against that utter stillness, under the hot sun.

  ‘Oh, yes!’ breathed Vicky. She jumped out of the car in a whirl of skirts. ‘That’s why they were able to come and take me. When I was a child.’

  ‘They?’

  ‘Dear Sir Henry! Do I need to explain?’

  Then Vicky looked at Bill.

  ‘I must apologise,’ she said, ‘for the state the house is in. I haven’t been out here for months and months. There’s a modern bathroom, I’m glad to say. Only paraffin lamps, of course. But then,’ a dreamy smile flashed across her face, ‘you won’t need lamps, will you? Unless …’

  ‘You mean,’ said Bill, who was taking a black case out of the car, ‘unless you disappear again?’

  ‘Yes, Bill. And promise me you won’t be frightened when I do.’

  The young man uttered a ringing oath which was shushed by Sir Henry Merrivale, who austerely said he disapproved of profanity. Eve Drayton was very quiet.

  ‘But in the meantime,’ Vicky said wistfully, ‘let’s forget it all, shall we? Let’s laugh and dance and sing and pretend we’re children! And surely our guest must be even more hungry by this time?’

  It was in this emotional state that they sat down to their picnic.

  H.M., if the truth must be told, did not fare too badly. Instead of sitting on some hummock of ground, they dragged a table and chairs to the shaded porch. All spoke in strained voices. But no word of controversy was said. It was only afterwards, when the cloth was cleared, the furniture and hampers pushed indoors, the empty bottles flung away, that danger tapped a warning.

  From under the porch Vicky fished out two half-rotted deckchairs, which she set up in the long grass of the lawn. These were to be occupied by Eve and H.M., while Vicky took Bill Sage to inspect a plum tree of some remarkable quality she did not specify.

  Eve sat down without comment. H.M., who was smoking a black cigar opposite her, waited some time before he spoke.

  ‘Y’know,’ he said, taking the cigar out of his mouth, ‘you’re behaving remarkably well.’

  ‘Yes,’ Eve laughed. ‘Aren’t I?’

  ‘Are you pretty well acquainted with this Adams gal?’

  ‘I’m her first cousin,’ Eve answered simply. ‘Now that her parents are dead, I’m the only relative she’s got. I know all about her.’

  From far across the lawn floated two voices saying something about wild strawberries. Eve, her fair hair and fair complexion vivid against the dark line of Goblin Wood, clenched her hands on her knees.

  ‘You see, H.M.,’ she hesitated, ‘there was another reason why I invited you here. I – I don’t quite know how to approach it.’

  ‘I’m the old man,’ said H.M., tapping himself impressively on the chest. ‘You tell me.’

  ‘Eve, darling!’ interposed Vicky’s voice, crying across the ragged lawn. ‘Coo-ee! Eve!’

  ‘Yes, dear?’

  ‘I’ve just remembered,’ cried Vicky, ‘that I haven’t shown Bill over the cottage! You don’t mind if I steal him away from you for a little while?’

  ‘No, dear! Of course not!’

  It was H.M., sitting so as to face the bungalow, who saw Vicky and Bill go in. He saw Vicky’s wistful smile as she closed the door after them. Eve did not even look round. The sun was declining, making fiery chinks through the thickness of Goblin Wood behind the cottage.

  ‘I won’t let her have him,’ Eve suddenly cried. ‘I won’t! I won’t! I won’t!’

  ‘Does she want him, my wench? Or, which is more to the point, does he want her?’

  ‘He never has,’ Eve said with emphasis. ‘Not really. And he never will.’

  H.M., motionless, puffed out cigar smoke.

  ‘Vicky’s a faker,’ said Eve. ‘Does that sound catty?’

  ‘Not necessarily. I was just thinkin’ the same thing myself.’

  ‘I’m patient,’ said Eve. Her blue eyes were fixed. ‘I’m terribly, terribly patient. I can wait years for what I want. Bill’s not making much money now, and I haven’t got a bean. But Bill’s got great talent under that easy-going manner of his. He must have the right girl to help him. If only …’

  ‘If only the elfin sprite would let him alone. Hey?’

  ‘Vicky acts like that,’ said Eve, ‘towards practically every man she ever meets. That’s why she never married. She says it leaves her soul free to commune with other souls. This occultism—’

  Then it all poured out, the family story of the Adamses. This repressed girl spoke at length, spoke as perhaps she had never spoken before. Vicky Adams, the child who wanted to attract attention, her father, Uncle Fred, and her mother, Aunt Margaret, seemed to walk in vividness as the shadows gathered.

  ‘I was too young to know her at the time of the “disappearance”, of course. But, oh, I knew her afterwards! And I thought …’

  ‘Well?’

  ‘If I could get you here,’ said Eve, ‘I thought she’d try to show off with some game. And then you’d expose her. And Bill would see what an awful faker she is. But it’s hopeless! It’s hopeless!’

  ‘Looky here,’ observed H.M., who was smoking his third cigar. He sat up. ‘Doesn’t it strike you those two are being a rummy-awful long time just in lookin’ through a little bungalow?’

  Eve, roused out of a dream, stared back at him. She sprang to her feet. She was not now, you could guess, thinking of any disappearance.

  ‘Excuse me a moment,’ she said curtly.

  Eve hurried across to the cottage, went up on the porch, and opened the front door. H.M. heard her heels rap down the length of the small passage inside. She marched straight back again, closed the front door, and rejoined H.M.

  ‘All the doors of the rooms are shut,’ she announced in a high voice. ‘I really don’t think I ought to disturb them.’

  ‘Easy, my wench!’

  ‘I have absolutely no interest,’ declared Eve, with the tears coming into her eyes, ‘in what happens to either of them now. Shall we take the car and go back to town without them?’

  H.M. threw away his cigar, got up, and seized her by the shoulders.

  ‘I’m the old man,’ he said, with a leer like an ogre. ‘Will you listen to me?�
��

  ‘No!’

  ‘If I’m any reader of the human dial,’ persisted H.M., ‘that young feller’s no more gone on Vicky Adams than I am. He was scared, my wench. Scared.’ Doubt, indecision crossed H.M.’s face. ‘I dunno what he’s scared of. Burn me, I don’t! But …’

  ‘Hoy!’ called the voice of Bill Sage. It did not come from the direction of the cottage.

  They were surrounded on three sides by Goblin Wood, now blurred with twilight. From the north side the voice bawled at them, followed by crackling in dry undergrowth. Bill, his hair and sports coat and flannels more than a little dirty, regarded them with a face of bitterness.

  ‘Here are her blasted wild strawberries,’ he announced, extending his hand. ‘Three of ’em. The fruitful (excuse me) result of three-quarters of an hour’s hard labour. I absolutely refuse to chase ’em in the dark.’

  For a moment Eve Drayton’s mouth moved without speech. ‘Then you weren’t … in the cottage all this time?’

  ‘In the cottage?’ Bill glanced at it. ‘I was in that cottage,’ he said, ‘about five minutes. Vicky had a woman’s whim. She wanted some wild strawberries out of what she called the “forest”.’

  ‘Wait a minute, son!’ said H.M. very sharply. ‘You didn’t come out that front door. Nobody did.’

  ‘No! I went out the back door! It opens straight on the wood.’

  ‘Yes. And what happened then?’

  ‘Well, I went to look for these damned …’

  ‘No, no! What did she do?’

  ‘Vicky? She locked and bolted the back door on the inside. I remember her grinning at me through the glass panel. She—’

  Bill stopped short. His eyes widened, and then narrowed, as though at the impact of an idea. All three of them turned to look at the rough-stone cottage.

  ‘By the way,’ said Bill. He cleared his throat vigorously. ‘By the way, have you seen Vicky since then?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘This couldn’t be …?’

  ‘It could be, son,’ said H.M. ‘We’d all better go in there and have a look.’

  They hesitated for a moment on the porch. A warm, moist fragrance breathed up from the ground after sunset. In half an hour it would be completely dark.

  Bill Sage threw open the front door and shouted Vicky’s name. That sound seemed to penetrate, reverberating, through every room. The intense heat and stuffiness of the cottage, where no window had been raised in months, blew out at them. But nobody answered.

  ‘Get inside,’ snapped H.M. ‘And stop yowlin’.’ The Old Maestro was nervous. ‘I’m dead sure she didn’t get out by the front door; but we’ll just make certain there’s no slippin’ out now.’

  Stumbling over the table and chairs they had used on the porch, he fastened the front door. They were in a narrow passage, once handsome with parquet floor and pine-panelled walls, leading to a door with a glass panel at the rear. H.M. lumbered forward to inspect this door, and found it locked and bolted, as Bill had said.

  Goblin Wood grew darker.

  Keeping well together, they searched the cottage. It was not large, having two good-sized rooms on one side of the passage, and two small rooms on the other side, so as to make space for bathroom and kitchenette. H.M., raising fogs of dust, ransacked every inch where a person could possibly hide.

  And all the windows were locked on the inside. And the chimney flues were too narrow to admit anybody.

  And Vicky Adams wasn’t there.

  ‘Oh, my eye!’ breathed Sir Henry Merrivale.

  They had gathered, by what idiotic impulse not even H.M. could have said, just outside the open door of the bathroom. A bath-tap dripped monotonously. The last light through a frosted-glass window showed three faces hung there as though disembodied.

  ‘Bill,’ said Eve in an unsteady voice, ‘this is a trick. Oh, I’ve longed for her to be exposed! This is a trick!’

  ‘Then where is she?’

  ‘H.M. can tell us! Can’t you, H.M.?’

  ‘Well … now,’ muttered the great man.

  Across H.M.’s Panama hat was a large black handprint, made there when he had pressed down the hat after investigating the chimney. He glowered under it.

  ‘Son,’ he said to Bill, ‘there’s just one question I want you to answer in all this hokey-pokey. When you went out pickin’ wild strawberries, will you swear Vicky Adams didn’t go with you?’

  ‘As God is my Judge, she didn’t,’ returned Bill, with fervency and obvious truth. ‘Besides, how the devil could she? Look at the lock and bolt on the back door!’

  H.M. made two more violent black handprints on his hat.

  He lumbered forward, his head down, two or three paces in the narrow passage. His foot half-skidded on something that had been lying there unnoticed, and he picked it up. It was a large, square section of thin, waterproof oilskin, jagged at one corner.

  ‘Have you found anything?’ demanded Bill in a strained voice. ‘No. Not to make any sense, that is. But just a minute!’

  At the rear of the passage, on the left-hand side, was the bedroom from which Vicky Adams had vanished as a child. Though H.M. had searched this room once before, he opened the door again.

  It was now almost dark in Goblin Wood.

  He saw dimly a room twenty years before: a room of flounces, of lace curtains, of once-polished mahogany, its mirrors glimmering against white-papered walls. H.M. seemed especially interested in the windows.

  He ran his hands carefully round the frame of each, even climbing laboriously up on a chair to examine the tops. He borrowed a box of matches from Bill; and the little spurts of light, following the rasp of the match, rasped against nerves as well. The hope died out of his face, and his companions saw it.

  ‘H.M.,’ Bill said for the dozenth time, ‘where is she?’

  ‘Son,’ replied H.M. despondently, ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Let’s get out of here,’ Eve said abruptly. Her voice was a small scream. ‘I kn-know it’s all a trick! I know Vicky’s a faker! But let’s get out of here. For God’s sake let’s get out of here!’

  ‘As a matter of fact,’ Bill cleared his throat, ‘I agree. Anyway, we won’t hear from Vicky until tomorrow morning.’

  ‘Oh, yes, you will,’ whispered Vicky’s voice out of the darkness. Eve screamed.

  They lighted a lamp.

  But there was nobody there.

  Their retreat from the cottage, it must be admitted, was not very dignified.

  How they stumbled down that ragged lawn in the dark, how they piled rugs and picnic hampers into the car, how they eventually found the main road again, is best left undescribed.

  Sir Henry Merrivale has since sneered at this – ‘a bit of a goosy feeling; nothin’ much’ – and it is true that he has no nerves to speak of. But he can be worried, badly worried, and that he was worried on this occasion may be deduced from what happened later.

  H.M., after dropping in at Claridge’s for a modest late supper of lobster and Pêche Melba, returned to his house in Brook Street and slept a hideous sleep. It was three o’clock in the morning, even before the summer dawn, when the ringing of the bedside telephone roused him.

  What he heard sent his blood pressure soaring. ‘Dear Sir Henry!’ crooned a familiar and sprite-like voice.

  H.M. was himself again, full of gall and bile. He switched on the bedside lamp and put on his spectacles with care, so as adequately to address the phone.

  ‘Have I got the honour,’ he said with dangerous politeness, ‘of addressin’ Miss Vicky Adams?’

  ‘Oh, yes!’

  ‘I sincerely trust,’ said H.M., ‘you’ve been havin’ a good time? Are you materialised yet?’

  ‘Oh, yes!’

  ‘Where are you now?’

  ‘I’m afraid’ – there was coy laughter in the voice – ‘that must be a little secret for a day or two. I want to teach you a really good lesson. Blessings, dear.’

  And she hung up the receiver.

 
H.M. did not say anything. He climbed out of bed. He stalked up and down the room, his corporation majestic under an old-fashioned nightshirt stretching to his heels. Then, since he himself had been waked up at three o’clock in the morning, the obvious course was to wake up somebody else; so he dialled the home number of Chief Inspector Masters.

  ‘No, sir,’ retorted Masters grimly, after coughing the frog out of his throat, ‘I do not mind you ringing up. Not a bit of it!’ He spoke with a certain pleasure. ‘Because I’ve got a bit of news for you.’

  H.M. eyed the phone suspiciously.

  ‘Masters, are you trying to do me in the eye again?’

  ‘It’s what you always try to do to me, isn’t it?’

  ‘All right, all right!’ growled H.M. ‘What’s the news?’

  ‘Do you remember mentioning the Vicky Adams case to me yesterday?’

  ‘Sort of. Yes.’

  ‘Oh, ah! Well, I had a word or two round among our people. I was tipped the wink to go and see a certain solicitor. He was old Mr Fred Adams’s solicitor before Mr Adams died about six or seven years ago.’

  Here Masters’s voice grew suave with triumph.

  ‘I always said, Sir Henry, that Chuck Randall had planted some gadget in that cottage for a quick getaway. And I was right. The gadget was …’

  ‘You were quite right, Masters. The gadget was a trick window.’

  The telephone so to speak, gave a start.

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘A trick window.’ H.M. spoke patiently. ‘You press a spring. And the whole frame of the window, two leaves locked together, slides down between the walls far enough so you can climb over. Then you push it back up again.’

  ‘How in lum’s name do you know that?’

  ‘Oh, my son! They used to build windows like it in country houses during the persecution of Catholic priests. It was a good enough second guess. Only … it won’t work.’

  Masters seemed annoyed. ‘It won’t work now,’ he agreed. ‘And do you know why?’

  ‘I can guess. Tell me.’

  ‘Because, just before Mr Adams died, he discovered how his darling daughter had flummoxed him. He never told anybody except his lawyer. He took a handful of four-inch nails, and sealed up the top of that frame so tight an orang-outang couldn’t move it, and painted ’em over so they wouldn’t be noticed.’