Death in Dark Glasses (Inspector Littlejohn)

by George Bellairs

  "Thanks very much. . . ."

  The schedule showed a block booking for the football team and their followers, returning to the island, the officials said, in triumph, five goals to one. Then, the rest of the passengers:

  Nostro and Orton, a music-hall turn.

  Mr. J. Qualtrough, obviously a Manxman.

  Mr. & Mrs. W. Quiggin, no doubt about where they came from.

  Mr. J. F. Curtin . . .

  and . . .

  Littlejohn chuckled at the next name.

  Rev. Caesar Kinrade. What a stroke of luck! The old parson, who hated travel of any kind, had turned up again !

  "That means I have to cross on the next 'plane myself," said the Inspector.

  "You'll be lucky if you get a seat, sir."

  "I'll travel as freight, if needs be. . . ."

  And he showed them his warrant card again and said it was vital. They tucked him in with the crew.

  15

  THE VICAR OF GRENABY

  MR. LOONEY and his fantastic vehicle were nowhere about and Littlejohn therefore made a more comfortable and respectable journey to the parsonage at Grenaby. They had not got far from the airport before the taxi took the road to the interior of the island and began to rise steadily through rich farmland and neat, prosperous-looking homesteads. The neighbourhood grew more and more lonely, and they passed ruined cottages and deserted crofts until finally, the road descended through fine, leafy trees to a sturdy, compact stone bridge spanning a clear trout stream. On one side, a ruined mill and on the other, a forlorn-looking mansion, once the home of the mill-owner. Another rise, and then the taxi took to the private lane, locally known as "the street", which led to Grenaby Vicarage.

  The parsonage was quite a distance from the church, which Littlejohn during his trip never saw at all. The house itself was large, strong and foursquare, built of local stone with a fine doorway and fanlight and square sash windows, now reflecting the light of the late afternoon sun. The trees and plants in the garden were lush and neglected, the parsonage looked ready for a coat of paint, and the tumbledown outbuildings, surmounted by a crazy weathercock, hinted that the vicar's neat trap and spanking pony had given place to Mr. Looney's ramshackle chariot more or less permanently.

  Littlejohn tugged at the bell-pull and after a lot of shambling about indoors, a very old lady greeted him on the threshold.

  "Speak up. I'm a bit deaf."

  Littlejohn asked, fortissimo, for the vicar and the strength of his request brought the good man himself into the hall. The whole place, although neglected outside, was spotless indoors. Fine, heavy mahogany pieces furnished the hall.

  "Hullo," muttered the Rev. Caesar Kinrade. "I thought I would be seeing you again. Come inside."

  He stood aside to give Littlejohn entrance into a large majestic room, which he apparently used as a dining-room and study combined. There was a beautiful Regency dining-table there, and five small Trafalgar chairs and a carver round it. Beside the good log fire, two comfortable wing chairs. The walls were covered from floor to ceiling with books of every shape and size, old, new, dirty and clean. Manuscripts for a sermon on a little table under the window.

  The table was set and the vicar bade his housekeeper lay another place.

  "Manx lobsters for supper," he said, waving aside Littlejohn's polite excuses. "For what we are about to receive, etc. . . . Sit down and make a start. I thank you beforehand for your company, Inspector."

  "This is really too good of you, sir. . . ."

  "It's a treat for me. I'm a lonely man. Five children and my dear wife once sat round this table. Now, I'm all alone. My wife has been gone nearly twenty years and all my children are married, happy and thriving, deo gratias. I see you like my picture."

  Littlejohn was facing the fire over which hung an oil painting of what must surely have been an island scene. Great rolling hills in browns and purples and greens; the gorse, the heather and the bracken. In the foreground, rich cultivated fields, gradually shading off to the uplands where nature held sole sway, scattering her own colours with a lavish hand. Just where the cultivated joined the wild, two figures and a horse, all stocky and strong, were burning gorse and the light mist of smoke trailed away over the hills into nothing. . . .

  Littlejohn feasted his eyes on the picture, giving himself an antidote and new faith against the monstrosities he had seen in the home of the Faircloughs and in Gamaliel's book-shop.

  "Especially refreshing after some modern daubs I've just encountered in what we might call the course of duty. Who painted it and where is it?"

  "It was done by our own splendid island artist, William Hoggatt, commissioned by my parishioners for my eightieth birthday. I'm eighty-four, now. Just a bit deaf, but otherwise . . . I can read, walk as far as suits me, and I can still compose and write out in a fairish hand a sermon for my diminutive congregation. As for the scene itself . . . "

  He rose and drew back the curtain of the window.

  "Behold!"

  And there it was! Now in its summer clothing, whereas the artist had caught it in its autumn glory.

  "And now, to come down to earth. Here are the lobsters. . . ."

  The Rev. Caesar Kinrade refused to discuss business until the pair of them had disposed of the very excellent meal which the housekeeper had given them. The lobsters were fresh, the salad home-grown, and they finished off with a blackcurrant tart and fresh cream, and then local cheese. Littlejohn remembered that meal for many a day afterwards.

  Parson Kinrade favoured tea instead of coffee, and Littlejohn, enjoying the housekeeper's brew with spring water, agreed with him. They lit their pipes and sat in the chairs by the fire.

  "Are you staying the night or getting the last 'plane back, Inspector?"

  "I must get back to-night, sir. I've booked on the eight o'clock. I can't leave the case at this stage, though I'd very much like to. . . ."

  "Come back and tell me about it when it's all settled. And now, let me tell you what you've come after. . . ."

  "You know then, sir?"

  The Rev. Caesar Kinrade removed his glasses, stroked his froth of whiskers and looked Littlejohn full in the face with his piercing, kindly blue eyes.

  "Yes. I knew you'd come back after you found the dead body of . . . let me see . . . Oates, was it? . . . at the mine. Murder will out, Inspector, and I stand right across the trail which leads you to the murderer. But first, I want to know what it was all about. My conscience must be clear before I tell you what might easily hang a man."

  So, Littlejohn told Parson Kinrade the whole story, from the death of Wainwright Palmer, the defaulting bank cashier, on to the reason for his own presence in the Isle of Man. And he told the events which had led up to the strewing of the bodies of Finloe Oates, Jack Fishlock, Lysander Oates and Mortimer Gamaliel on the way. . . .

  "I have talked with the murderer," said the vicar in a whisper to himself.

  The incongruity of the situation struck Littlejohn. The quiet parsonage filled with gracious furniture from other days, the painting hanging like a blessing over the mantelpiece, the glorious view outside, the saintly bewhiskered vicar of Grenaby, sitting like a patriarch, calmly and relentlessly telling his story, and around them, the misty, lovely beginning of a Manx evening, the "little everin' " as the old folk called it. . . . Difficult to believe that not far away violence and death and a murderer were skulking. . . .

  "I knew you would be back, because of the picture you showed me of Snuff the Wind. I little thought then what you would find at the end of your little trip. But Looney called here with the news as soon as he could get away. He's a rare boy for a gossip."

  "He was a great help at the time, sir."

  "I'm sure he was. Well, I thought little about the incident of the picture, although I thought quite a lot of your meeting me on the 'plane and what you found afterwards. No; I forgot it, until suddenly I remembered that someone had asked me about Snuff the Wind before. It was long before your arrival and . . .
well, Inspector, I must confess that private events had driven sense out of my old head. The first time I saw a picture of the chapel and the mine was on the aeroplane you mentioned. The footballers were on it, and a merry lot they were, because they had won. Suddenly, I became aware that a man sitting across the gangway from my seat was looking closely at me. He was, I think, sizing me up. . . ."

  "What did he look like, sir?"

  "All in good time . . . all in good time. . . ."

  These old folk are rare storytellers, but they must tell their tale in their own way.

  "I'm sorry, sir. . . ."

  "There is a current belief, I know from experience, that old whiskery gentlemen, particularly if they happen to be clergymen, are in their dotage and are weak in their wits. The man of whom I speak—so much the worse for him, I'm afraid—evidently came to that conclusion. He tapped me on the shoulder and showed me a rough pencil sketch of Snuff the Wind. 'Could you tell me if such a place exists in the Isle of Man?' he said. I recognised it at once, and I told him so. He must have been very eager to know, because he asked his question whilst the navigator was warming-up his engines. We weren't even in the air."

  Parson Kinrade rose and sadly looked at the evening falling over his garden and the hills beyond.

  "Very beautiful, isn't it? You wouldn't think sin existed in such a lovely world, would you?"

  Littlejohn agreed with him and said so.

  "I have been vicar here for almost fifty years. I could have gone elsewhere, a larger parish here or a living on the mainland, but I love this place and its people. I elected to stay. As I was saying, and yet, even amid such beauty, evil exists. In my humble ministry, I have encountered, I suppose, every item in the devil's catalogue. . . . Here, in this very parish. Men's hearts are the same wherever you find them dwelling. To make my point, sir, I'm an old man and, as I say, I know evil when I see it. My calling has given me a nose for it. I scent it like a good gun-dog. I certainly scented it that afternoon in the 'plane. 'Those who plan some evil, from their sin restrain' . . . remember the childhood lines? I knew the man planned some great evil, yet, miserable that I was, I could do nothing to stop it. There he sat, showing me a sketch, asking me its location. I couldn't, or I hadn't the courage to say, 'Hold.' I told him and he forthwith went and killed a fellow man there."

  "You couldn't pretend to know, sir. . . ."

  "But I did. . . . Take a fill of this tobacco. It's ship's tobacco . . . my grandson in the Navy keeps me going. That day I had hastily crossed to Liverpool to hold the hand of a dying friend, a boyhood friend, in a Liverpool hospital. He had died and I was so upset that the incidents on the 'plane seemed to me like a faint dream until you found the dead man at Snuff the Wind. Then, I knew you would return without my asking you."

  "And about the man himself, sir. Did you take much heed of him?"

  "Yes. As I say, he thought me in my dotage and, in his folly, singled me out for his question. There were others there who looked much more intelligent. Had he asked Johnny Qualtrough who was sitting in front of him, he would have received the same answer, and it would have been forgotten. . . . But the mills of the gods grind slowly, don't they? God isn't mocked, you know. Through asking me, the man sealed his own doom. He wore dark spectacles and a cloth cap. The passage, though short, was what is technically known as a bit bumpy. The man was sick in one of the little bags provided for such emergencies. He must have had a very ticklish stomach; nobody else was much upset. Qualtrough looked a bit green, but the footballers kept up their merry banter all the time."

  "We know he preferred train travel. He refused a seat from Northolt, preferring the short air trip from Speke and he dreaded the idea of the boat. So . . ."

  "Yes. His glasses slipped down as he . . . in his contortions. . . . For a moment I saw his evil eyes, his mean features, and then he slid them back, looking at everyone but me, to see if he'd been spotted, ignoring me because I was an old dotard. He had green eyes and a mean, straight nose, his hair under his cap, which he surreptitiously raised to mop his sweating forehead, was dishevelled, wiry stuff which one can't control for long. It reminded one of a . . . a . . ."

  Littlejohn held his breath.

  "A shaving-brush. . . . Why, whatever . . . "

  Littlejohn had jumped to his feet in surprise.

  "I ought to have known . . . ! Whatever was I thinking of not to have remembered him . . . ?"

  "The devil looks after his own . . . just as long as it suits him to do so; then he destroys 'em."

  "So, Hazlett, after all!"

  "No, Inspector. That's not the name. It was Mathieson. . . ."

  It was Parson Kinrade's turn now to look puzzled and disappointed.

  "Mathieson, Inspector. He took a great risk when he thought I was stupid with old age. In looking at his pencil sketch, I held it gently to the light. There was an address on the other side of the envelope. I could just make out the name Mathieson and London, in typewriting on the reverse side."

  "Yes, sir. Mathieson & Co., Gedge Court, London. He is sole partner of a firm of solicitors of that name."

  "I see. This means, of course, that you have solved your case, Inspector."

  "Far from it, sir. . . ."

  Mr. Kinrade looked very disappointed.

  "You see, we have to prove he committed these crimes. It may look very suspicious and circumstantial for Mr. Hazlett to be over here just at the time Oates was killed. There are other incriminating items, too, as I've already told you. But there is more to do, yet. I'll have to have a word or two with Mr. Hazlett. . . ."

  "Rather an understatement, a word or two!"

  "Perhaps. If he is brought to book, it will be mainly through underestimating his antagonists, sir."

  "You mean . . ."

  "You and me, sir. You say he thought you were in your dotage and slipped-up. He must have thought I was a fool, too, last time I saw him. He boasted that he knew all about me and recited what he'd learned about my history and mode of living. He must have been sizing up the opposition."

  "He must be a wily brute, though. This plot was very cunningly laid, wasn't it?"

  "Yes; and there is still much more to do. If necessary, would you cross to England to identify Hazlett? He's a lawyer and likely to prove a slippery customer."

  "With pleasure."

  "And now just to check up one more point. Are there many garages who do hire-and-drive car business on the island?"

  "Two or three, I imagine. They're all in Douglas."

  "Do you know their names, sir?"

  "I don't. But if you're getting the eight 'plane, you'll need to leave in half an hour and you'd better get friend Looney's contraption to take you to the airport, if you can bear it for a brief distance. As you ring up Looney, ask him about the hire-and-drive people. . . . "

  Mr. Looney was in and, yes, he would be delighted to bring his vehicle for Littlejohn. He reeled off four hire-and-drive garages and apologised to Littlejohn for not being legally in a position to hire out his own tumbril to Littlejohn for driving in similar fashion.

  Littlejohn started to ring up the addresses given; it was high season and they were all late on duty. The second shot landed home.

  Yes; a fellow called Gurtin hired a car on the date in question. The man looked it up and checked it in his books. They remembered him quite well because he proved an awkward customer.

  "Why?"

  "Well, he haggled about the price for a start. And then it turned out he hadn't a Manx driving licence. We can't hire out without one. He got mad and a bit abusive. I told him all he needed to do was to go to the Highway Board office a few hundred yards down the street, show his mainland licence, and they'd issue him one right away."

  "Had he a mainland licence?"

  "He said he had, but he'd left it at home."

  "I'll bet he had!"

  "Beg pardon?"

  "How did he get the car, then?"

  "It ended by him hiring one of our men to drive him. They
went as far as Foxdale and then Mr. Curtin said he was staying there a bit. He set out for a walk with a map, got back two hours later and then they came back."

  "Was that all?"

  "No. He turned up again next day for the same outing. But this time, he did a dirty trick on us. He sent Kinnish, the driver, in one of the Foxdale stores for some postcards and while Kinnish was there, drove off with the car on his own. He threw a note out at Kinnish as he went off—'See you in an hour,' and went tearing towards the plantation."

  "Is that near Snuff the Wind?"

  "Aye; what of it?"

  "He came back later?"

  "Kinnish had to wait over two hours in Foxdale. Curtin paid him well, but it might have been awkward for us. The car wasn't insured for Curtin driving and he'd no Manx licence. . . ."

  "What kind of man was he?"

  "Middlin' built, thin, squeaky voice, argumentative. . . .Wore dark glasses all the time on account of the sun, he said. Check cap and light suit . . . "

  "Thank you very much. . . . "

  Littlejohn returned just as the sounds of Mr. Looney's old car became audible in the far distance.

  "Did you get what you wanted, Inspector?"

  "Yes, sir. I did. One more link in the chain. It was 'Curtin' all right who laid in wait for Hunt after he'd tricked him into crossing to Snuff the Wind."

  "He used a hired car?"

  "Yes. He presumably walked from Foxdale the day he killed Oates. Would that be far?"

  "An hour's walk almost."

  "I guessed so. The second time he went, he bolted with the car. They had to send a man with him because he daren't show his mainland driving licence to prove he could drive."

  Mr. Looney was making a noisy arrival at the vicarage gate.

  Littlejohn thanked the grand old man for all his help and hospitality.

  "It's been a privilege, Inspector, and I hope we'll soon meet again and you make a successful end to this sorry affair. This has been quite an exciting chapter in my rather quiet life. Not that I don't keep abreast of things. I read a lot and the world comes to me in my armchair. At present I'm reading some of the best stories I've ever come across. They're by Damon Runyon. Most amusing. . . . Most. . . . As you fly away, imagine me in the quiet of my study enjoying myself with Milk Ear Willie and Harry the Horse !"