by Evelyn James
“You went with Hanna to Spinner’s Farm?” Clara said.
“I did. She was distressed, wanted me to go with her to look for her father. At first, we searched the nearest fields, but we found nothing, and it occurred to me we were wasting time. He could have been anywhere. I suggested we narrow the search by finding out where he had been working that day from Spinner,” Matthew took a deep puff of smoke. “Hanna knew her father had gone to work for Spinner that day, you see.”
“How did Spinner react when you saw him?” Clara continued.
Matthew was thoughtful a moment.
“Mr Spinner opened his door and asked what we wanted, Hanna said her father was missing and could he tell us where he had been working that day. Mr Spinner grew upset, said he would do better than that and insisted on coming with us to show us exactly where Bill had been working. I did think it peculiar that a man like Spinner, who usually can’t give a damn about his people, was so concerned that night,” Matthew shrugged. “I assumed it was because Hanna was there and clearly worried about her father.”
“You went together to look for Mr Beech?” Clara asked.
Matthew agreed.
“What happened next?” Tommy interjected.
“Mr Spinner led the way, as he knew where Bill had been working. He had a torch, one of those modern sorts. I had an old lantern. Hanna kept close to me as she had no light at all,” Matthew blew out a smoke ring. He seemed untroubled by the story he was retelling. “We entered the field Bill had been working in and Mr Spinner called out that it was not far now, that he had been doing the hedges here. We could see that the hedges nearest us had not been trimmed or woven together, so he must have been working further down the slope.
“Next thing we know, Mr Spinner gives a yelp and comes to a stop. We both knew what that meant, and Hanna tried to rush forward, but I held her arm and wouldn’t let her.”
“Why did you do that?” Tommy asked.
“It was something about the way Mr Spinner gave that cry of his,” Matthew hefted his shoulders up and down again. “I felt it meant there was something the matter. I thought maybe Bill had had an accident with the hedging tool he had been using. It didn’t seem right to let Hanna go charging forward to see that.”
Matthew seemed uncertain why he had been so cautious, even though his excuses made a sort of sense. Clara guessed he had reacted more to what Spinner had said or done, than to his own thoughts and had later attempted to rationalise why he had felt so uneasy in that moment. Murder was a funny thing, sometimes you could sense it before you saw it, even when you were not expecting it.
“Mr Spinner turned around and came to me fast. He said that Bill looked to have had a bad accident and that Hanna ought to stay where she was, and I should come look. I really didn’t want to at that point, but I had to, didn’t I? Hanna protested, but we made her stay put. I am very glad we did,” Matthew gave a sigh that ended in him swallowing hard. He had seemed so calm retelling his experience, as if he was speaking about something innocuous, like a boat ride. Now it was beginning to become clear that the incident had shaken him more than he wanted to consider. “I walked back with Mr Spinner and he showed me the corpse. You know what the fool said to me? ‘Do you think he is alive?’ Honestly, I nearly swore at him! There was Bill with his throat ripped to shreds and a pitchfork in his chest and Mr Spinner is asking if he is alive!”
Matthew had spat the words and as a result choked himself on his pipe smoke. He hacked and coughed for a few seconds, before regaining his composure.
“I was too stunned to say what I was thinking, but Spinner suddenly steps forward and grabs the handle of the pitchfork as if he was going to pull it out and I said to him, ‘What are you doing? The man’s dead and the police need to see this!’ Mr Spinner stopped pulling on the pitchfork and just stared at me as if he could not fathom what I was saying.”
“Who went for the police?” Clara asked, though she knew from Spinner the answer. She wanted it confirmed.
“I did,” Matthew sighed. “Anything to get away from there. Spinner stood with Hanna and consoled her. I said to him she should not see her father that way and he agreed. I ran back down the slope and into Hangleton to find the constable who patrols the village, and I took him back to the scene of it all. You know, the stupid oaf looked at the body and said aloud, ‘Could have been suicide.’ I nearly slapped him one. That’s the sort of idiocy you deal with around here!”
Matthew’s composure had evaporated, and he was obviously agitated now. The discovery of the body had taken its toll on him, the scene of his elderly neighbour brutally cut down had left him deeply shaken.
“How long did you stay at the field?” Clara asked.
“Until the doctor came. I wasn’t needed after that and I had to be up early the next morning for work. I was glad to leave.”
“How was Mr Spinner during that time?” Tommy said.
“As you would expect. Upset. Anxious,” Matthew scratched at his chin. “He kept muttering that people would blame him for this, that it had happened on his land and everyone would say that made him culpable. He is like that. Paranoid. People around here aren’t fond of him.”
“Hanna told us something similar,” Clara agreed. “She said his arrival had displaced Mr Peterson and that had upset folks.”
“It certainly did,” Matthew pulled his pipe from his mouth. “I never much cared for Spinner’s father, though I can’t say I met him much, but he struck me as the sort of person who doesn’t give a tuppence for anyone else. But for years he employed Mr Peterson as the farm manager, and everyone was happy. Peterson ran that place smoothly and efficiently. You never saw the like. That farm was the envy of many a landowner around these parts, and they all wanted Peterson.
“Then one day Spinner’s father waltzes in and tells Peterson he is giving the farm to his son and Peterson best be gone by the end of the week! I can’t describe the shock we all felt. Peterson, luckily, was the sort of man who everyone wants, and he had another job before the day he had to leave. He gathered us around him and said that any man who wanted to join him at his new farm was welcome. He had been given free rein by the farmer to hire who he pleased.
“I didn’t even have to think about it. I had never met Alastair Spinner but if he was anything like his father, working for him would be unbearable. Most of us went with Peterson there and then.”
“But not William Beech,” Clara remarked.
“Bill wasn’t able to just up and leave. He can’t walk far for work,” it took a second for Matthew to realise his slip. “He couldn’t, I mean.”
He gnawed on his lower lip.
“You know how often I have wondered if Bill had been able to leave and work for Peterson whether he would not have died like that? Sometimes I even think about what might have happened if I was still working for Spinner, would I have been the one with the scythe in my neck?”
“You are suggesting this incident happened because of the location rather than the person?” Tommy said.
“No,” Matthew frowned and scratched his head. “That isn’t it so much. I’m not really sure what I am thinking anymore. It is so confusing.”
He shut his eyes and winced.
“I just know that poor old man did not deserve to die that way.”
“It’s a grim thing,” Clara sympathised. “Have the police spoken to you?”
“Yes, a constable came and saw me,” Matthew realised his pipe had burned out. “I told them the same as I just told you. I can’t see I am much help.”
“You have been more helpful then you realise,” Clara promised him. “We are sorry to have dragged you out of your house on a cold night.”
“I hardly notice the cold,” Matthew said bravely. “Anyway, it is hardly a sacrifice if it helps bring Bill’s killer to justice. He was a good old man.”
“Even with his dabbling in witchcraft?” Tommy suggested.
Matthew grinned at him.
“You’ve heard those
stories too? People take oranges and try to make cider with them, that’s what it is. Bill had his funny ways, but no more so than my grandmother did. He was of another generation, one which had quaint ideas and believed in things most of us dismiss. Though…” Matthew stared off into the distance. “…some of the stuff he talked about, it was uncanny. I sometimes thought he knew more than the rest of us.”
Matthew shuddered, whether from cold or fear was unclear. Possibly it was both.
“Anyway, the dark brings out ghosts, as Bill would say, and I am not in a mind to see one.”
Matthew gave a long look around himself as if anticipating seeing that ghost he had spoken of, maybe even the ghost of William Beech. He was looking more and more uncomfortable by the minute and it was obvious their conversation was at an end.
“Thank you, Mr Yates, for talking to us,” Clara said to him.
Matthew simply gave them a nod of his head, if he had had a cap on, he would have tugged the brim, then he headed back inside his house.
Tommy cast a look at Clara.
“Ghosts.”
“I don’t believe in them,” she said firmly. “I never have.”
“It’s easier to believe in them out in the country,” Tommy glanced around him, aside from the faint glow coming from the windows of the Yates’ home, the surrounding land was cloaked in darkness, the sort of thick, heavy blackness that feels physical, rather than simply visual. “It just feels like a ghost should be walking around here.”
“With the owls and the foxes and the badgers?” Clara asked him. “Ghosts do not exist, either in the town or country.”
“I am just saying that you can see why people would be more inclined to be superstitious in an area like this,” Tommy persisted doggedly. “Don’t be so stubborn on the matter.”
“I am not being stubborn.”
“Yes, you are.”
Clara grumbled under her breath.
“In any case, Mr Beech believed in ghosts, and whether right or wrong, that belief shaped his life if it is true he was scared to go out at night,” Tommy added.
Clara took a good look around her, at the sombre fields, cloaked in the blanket of night, at the moonless sky, dense with clouds. She saw nothing about it that inspired her to imagine ghouls or wisps appearing from nowhere to torment her. The only reason to be afraid of the dark was because of the very alive people who might be lurking about in it. People with unpleasant intentions.
Maybe there was more to Beech’s fear of the dark than just superstition? What if he did have an enemy, someone he was scared of and who might use the cover of night to strike him? That was a very rational reason for avoiding being out after dark. Unfortunately, if there was such an enemy, Mr Beech had not informed his daughter about them.
Clara and Tommy walked back to the car.
“Too late to pay a call on Mr Gage,” she said once they were seated inside and the full beams of the headlights had chased off the darkness. “Best we call it a day and go home.”
Jones accepted his instructions without saying a word. He was a silent individual at the best of times. He did nod his head to indicate he understood then began the laborious process of finding somewhere suitable to turn the car around.
Chapter Sixteen
They were passing back through Hangleton, Jones taking his time as the roads were pitch black and narrow, when a commotion near The King’s Arms drew their attention.
“Hello, what’s that all about?” Tommy said.
There was a police constable visible among a group of four or five people, though it was difficult to say what he was doing. He seemed to be speaking fast and gesticulating with his arms. Clara was instantly curious.
“We should investigate. Please pull over, Jones.”
Their driver obeyed, but there was a concerned look on his face.
“Any trouble, miss, just shout for me,” he told Clara, his voice serious. “I shall wait with the car.”
What he left unspoken was that he didn’t trust the people around here and he didn’t like the look of the little group ahead. They seemed agitated, and their voices were raised. What had stirred up the excitement?
Clara left the car with Tommy and they walked over to the group casually. Closer, they could hear the police constable speaking, regaling his audience with some story.
“…and then it ran across the field, right where Mr Beech died!”
His onlookers gasped and their alarm was obvious. They consisted of a woman and three men, all over the age of thirty and one of the gents was probably pushing eighty. He leaned over his walking stick and had to crane up his head at an awkward angle to listen.
“Good evening,” Clara called. Clara worked on the theory that all good detective work was really the result of incredible nosiness. She had no real reason for stopping to see what the group was discussing, no reason to suppose it had anything to do with Mr Beech’s death, but her natural curiosity would not allow her to just turn away. You never knew when you might garner an interesting titbit of information from a seemingly random conversation.
The group glanced up at her voice, but then immediately ignored her, assuming she was a passer-by headed for the pub, or simply not caring to speak to her. The constable had not looked in her direction and was still talking, despite her interruption.
“I was scared to death, I can tell you. Seeing a thing like that. It isn’t right.”
“You should have a drink,” the old gent instructed him.
“Not on duty,” the constable hastily added, and Clara got the impression he had realised she was there and was on his best behaviour. She suspected, had she and Tommy not arrived, he would have gladly accepted the drink.
“That’s a shame, drop of whisky would settle your nerves,” the old man insisted.
“It’s a bad omen,” the solitary woman in the group declared. “Blood being spilt and all, now we shall see more things like this.”
“I don’t want to think about it,” the constable shivered. “I shan’t sleep tonight.”
“How long have you left on your patrol?” The old boy asked.
“Four hours. And then I switch with Withering. You know, I was on duty when Mr Beech was found dead too. I was the one called up there and saw his body. You never saw the like. It weren’t right, it just weren’t right,” the constable was looking distressed. He was only a young man, probably no more than twenty-one and by all rights he should have been able to expect a peaceful career in Hangleton. Sheep rustling, occasional drunken fights, and the odd missing child, the most he should have had to worry about. Maybe, on dark days, he had contemplated the possibility of being called to a suicide, or even a serious accident, but a gruesome murder? That had never entered his wildest dreams. He looked shaken, and that was hardly surprising, anyone would be shaken seeing a man with his head nearly hacked off. More than likely, the constable had known Mr Beech in life, and that made things even harder.
“You shouldn’t carry on patrolling alone,” the woman said. “Not with that thing you saw hanging around. You ask me, it is linked with the death of Mr Beech.”
“He was a weird one,” another of the men muttered. “Harmless, I suppose, but weird.”
“Excuse me,” Clara interjected, receiving stern glances from the speakers, aside from the constable. The woman, in particular, scowled at her for interrupting them. “I wondered if I might speak with the constable?”
“Is it urgent?” The woman demanded, plainly considering her conversation much more important than anything Clara could say.
“Yes,” Clara told her instantly, though of course it was not. She just wanted to find out what the constable had seen, or rather who. It sounded as if someone might have been lingering around the murder scene – might the killer have come back looking for something.
“I best be off, anyway,” the constable said to them. “I have half of Hangleton to walk as yet.”
“Well you stay clear of that field from now on,” the woman co
mmanded him.
“I can’t, it’s on my route.”
“You best tell your senior officer you aren’t walking that way again, not alone, anyway. It’s not right.”
The woman was still muttering about things being ‘not right’ as she headed for her home. The men dispersed too, one returning to the pub, while the old gent and the third man walked down the street. The police constable turned to Clara.
“How can I help you?”
“What is your name, first?” Clara said.
“Constable Stanley, miss,” the young policeman informed her.
“Good to meet you, Constable Stanley. I am friends with Inspector Park-Coombs,” Clara said.
The constable’s face fell.
“I shall inform him,” Clara continued quickly, “that you appear to be performing your duties very ably under trying circumstances.”
Constable Stanley swallowed hard.
“You won’t tell him I said I was scared?”
“No,” Clara promised him. “Though, there is no shame in that. All policemen feel fear at some point in their careers. They would be fools not to.”
The constable looked relieved at this information.
“What were you telling those folks about?” Tommy asked.
“Oh, it was nothing, sir,” Constable Stanley suddenly looked abashed.
“It must have been something, the way everyone was reacting seemed to suggest it was quite important,” Tommy pressed.
Constable Stanley moved his feet, shuffling as if he was cold, when really he was anxious.
“It seems a bit foolish, now,” he said.
“If you have seen something that might be connected with the death of Mr Beech, you ought to speak up, no matter if you feel it could be foolish,” Clara told him sternly. “It is little details, like that, which can solve a case.”
She was wondering if the constable had unwittingly witnessed Mr Spinner searching around the crime scene. Perhaps the farmer had suddenly remembered something he had dropped that might place him in a suspicious light?