Head of a Traveller

by Nicholas Blake

  ‘But you didn’t see the storm-lantern again?’

  ‘No. I—oh!’ It was a little wail of dismay. Mara bit her knuckles, staring at him with affrighted eyes. ‘Finny said there was a storm lantern in the dairy, lit. But that needn’t mean anything bad, need it?’

  ‘You go back now, my dear,’ said Nigel gently. ‘You can work this canoe?’

  ‘Aren’t you coming?’

  ‘Not yet. I must walk over to Hinton Lacey. Would you be an angel and tell them I’ll not be in for supper?’

  Nigel climbed out of the canoe, and untied the mooring rope. Mara was sitting motionless, gazing in front of her. When she spoke, it was not what Nigel expected.

  ‘Ought I to tell Lionel?’ she asked, childishly.

  ‘About the storm-lantern? Well—’

  ‘No, no! Damn the lantern! You can chase after that will-o’-the-wisp, if you like. I mean about Oswald and me.’

  ‘Yes. But not yet. You don’t want him to marry you out of pity, or to get it into his head that he’s to be a sort of male nurse from now on. Wait till you’ve got quite accustomed in your own mind to what you’ve discovered about the Oswald incident today. There’s bound to be a pretty severe reaction. You can’t deny the truth to yourself all these years and expect everything to be straightforward once you’ve admitted it.’

  Nigel had been making a noose with the free end of the painter. He tossed it neatly over Mara’s head and shoulders, then gave the canoe a push with his foot. When the girl had disengaged herself and knelt down by the starting handle, she looked up at him.

  ‘You’ll make it all right about the storm-lantern, won’t you?’ she said, trying to smile . . .

  Twenty minutes later, Nigel was talking with Superintendent Blount. He gave him a résumé of Mara’s information.

  ‘So that’s how they got Oswald out of the country,’ said Blount. ‘Compounding a felony. Hah!’

  ‘Not so much of your “they,” Blount! If Miss Torrance has given me the facts correctly, her father wasn’t told about Oswald’s nasty deed till after he’d “committed suicide.” I’m pretty sure now he was not involved in the conspiracy of Oswald’s disappearance. He may have suspected some hanky-panky about it: but I don’t believe he had evidence on which he could blackmail the Seatons.’

  ‘You may be right. But the Seatons are in it, up to the neck, anyway.’

  ‘I disagree. My bet is that Janet Seaton arranged the whole thing, single-handed. And you’re safe to tell your chap down there—Inspector Slingsby, isn’t it?—to concentrate on her now.’

  ‘How d’you make that out?’

  Nigel ticked the points off on his fingers. ‘First, Robert was a poor man and couldn’t have had the necessary cash. Second, I believe he’s an honourable man, and it would never have occurred to him to exploit Oswald’s crime for his own benefit. Third, Oswald’s “suicide” would need a good deal of time, as well as money, to arrange. Now, from Mara’s evidence, Robert was with her nearly all the time after the horrible thing happened, till Oswald disappeared. Janet was only with her at night. And Rennell Torrance told me that Janet was pretty thick with Oswald those days—“ministering to him,” is how he put it. Putting the screws on him, I should call it. Fourth, it all fits in with what we know of Janet. She’d set her cap at Oswald and had been rejected. Then she finds out what Oswald has done to Mara. Salt in the wound, Blount. It’s highly significant that she should have taken a violently censorious and nastily inquisitive line with the poor child that day. We won’t labour the morbid psychology point—it’s obvious. And, on top of that, she was a strong-minded, ambitious woman, with a monomania about her ancestral home. If Robert could come in for the property, she could get her hands on Robert, easy as pie. And she would. And she did. Q.E.D.’

  Blount vigorously massaged his bald head. ‘I’ve a mind to go down to Somerset tomorrow. I’ll leave you and Bower to look after things here.’

  ‘Thank you very much.’

  ‘You’ll not be up to any games?’ said Blount, glancing at him severely. ‘That storm-lantern, now. It looks bad.’

  ‘I presume you’ve asked Robert Seaton how it came to be in the dairy?’

  ‘He said he’d left it by the mare’s loose-box when they went out to look at her.’

  Nigel raised his eyebrows. ‘Well, perhaps he did. Somebody else may have used it later. The murderer. Or Oswald. Fingerprints?’

  ‘It’d been cleaned. Nothing suspicious about that, necessarily: Mrs Seaton likes things kept kenspeckle. It’s a queer thing about this case, incidentally, there being no fingerprints of the victim anywhere. Gates tried any number of likely surfaces early on, as you know. But—’

  ‘It’s all part and parcel of Oswald’s caution. One keeps on forgetting that he was a criminal. He’d take damned good care not to touch anything, in case someone here ratted on him and he had to make a bolt for it again.’

  Superintendent Blount moved heavily across the room, sat down on the window-seat and looked out at the evening sky. ‘There are times,’ he announced with a sigh, ‘when I find myself wondering if that laddie ever existed at all.’

  ‘Oswald?’

  ‘Uh-huh.’

  ‘I know what you mean.’

  ‘A body. A head. And a dirty story. That’s all he seems to amount to. If only we could trace his movements—fill in the picture a bit.’

  ‘You’ve not done badly, you know.’

  ‘It’s the way, apart from the little matter of his head and body, he vanished without a trace. He gets out at a railway station, walks through a wood—and p’ff.’ Blount flicked his fingers.

  ‘Good Lord! One thing I quite forgot to tell you. Mara heard her father talking to a strange man at twelve-fifteen that night.’

  Before Blount could speak, the inn-keeper put his nose through the door to say that the Superintendent was wanted on the telephone. Two minutes later, he returned. He said:

  ‘That was Rennell Torrance. He wishes to make a statement.’

  Chapter 11

  Lionel Seaton Overhears

  THE SUPERINTENDENT WAS not going to take Rennell Torrance’s statement till next morning. ‘The reducing process,’ he called this. If Torrance was the guilty man, whether he intended to confess or to spin a yarn, the night’s delay would get on his nerves: if not, the apparent negligence with which Blount had treated his message would be calculated to make him all the more forthcoming tomorrow, in an effort to impress the Superintendent. Blount dispatched the long-suffering Sergeant Bower, however, to keep an eye on the Old Barn during the night, just in case Torrance should change his mind and decide to make a run for it. He asked Nigel, on the general principle of keeping every one on the jump, to let it be known at Plash Meadow, when he returned, that Torrance was making a statement next day.

  ‘If any of ’em have a bad conscience, it’ll stir ’em up,’ he said.

  ‘Let’s hope Bower stays awake then,’ remarked Nigel. ‘You’d look pretty silly if Torrance was liquidated tonight.’

  ‘I’ve every confidence in Sergeant Bower,’ said Blount, a little stiffly.

  After he had left the Superintendent, Nigel decided to look in on Paul Willingham. He found his friend sitting, elbow-deep in paper, at the parlour table.

  ‘Home-work,’ said Paul. ‘Give me ten minutes. There’s some beer over there. And a bottle of Hollands; very expensive, very good for the liver.’

  Nigel poured himself a glass of Hollands, borrowed a sheet of paper and set to work on a time-table. He had already spent a lot of time trying to work out the movements of people on that Thursday night, but every time-table seemed to have more gaps and question-marks than the last. However, with what he had heard from Finny Black and Mara today, a few gaps might be filled in.

  Farmyard noises strayed agreeably through the open window as he worked. Presently Paul muttered:

  ‘Now for P.A.Y.E. Then I’ll be finished.’

  He flipped through the Tax Tables and set to
working out the weekly deductions for his farm-hands. When he had finished, he put down the Stylograph pen with which he had been making the entries, took out a cheque book and rummaged amongst the papers on the table.

  ‘What are you looking for?’ asked Nigel.

  ‘My dip pen.’

  ‘Stylo run out?’

  ‘No, but I want to sign a cheque.’

  ‘I don’t get you.’

  ‘Well,’ said Paul abstractedly, ‘I was going to sign a cheque with the old Stylograph at a Travel Agency last year, and the bloke asked me to use another pen. It was the Agency’s cheque book. He said the old Stylo left an impression on the cheque below the one you’re actually writing on; so a criminal type could ink in your signature on the next cheque form and draw himself a few hundred or thousand smackers as the case might be. Ah, here it is! So, seeing as you’re in the room, I thought I’d better be on the safe side.’

  ‘You make life very complicated for yourself.’

  Paul Willingham put cheque and Deducation Cards into an envelope and sealed it up.

  ‘Well, how’s your murder going?’ he asked, pouring beer into his tankard.

  Nigel gave him a brief synopsis, leaving out Mara Torrance’s private affairs.

  ‘What do you think?’ he said at the end of it.

  ‘Obviously the work of a gang,’ was Paul’s cheerful comment.

  Nigel buried his head in his hands and groaned.

  ‘A gang of mysterious orientals, I suppose?’

  ‘No, no. I’m quite serious. I’ve been giving the matter some thought. It’s like this, Nigel. Let’s agree, for the sake of argument, that Oswald was carved up in the dairy. Now, look what had to be done. First, he had to be got into the dairy: then his throat cut: then his clothes removed: then his head had to be severed from his body: then a net-bag provided to put the head in, with the idea of carrying it away and hiding it somewhere: then the body had to be wrapped up in his mackintosh, conveyed to the river and presumably towed some way downstream by a strong swimmer: then the bundle of clothes had to be hidden in the church vault, and the dairy sluiced down. Not necessarily in that order, of course. Have I left anything out?’

  ‘I don’t think so. You might have been there yourself.’

  ‘Plus a few oddments—going through the pockets of the clothes to see there was nothing incriminating in them; cleaning the tools and putting ’em back, or hiding ’em. All took time, old man. More time than any one person could afford. Besides, who kept cave? Can you see any one going through all those motions, even at night, even if he’d planned every detail beforehand, without another chap to keep watch? The risk’d be appalling. That’s why I say it was a gang.’

  ‘Yes, the thought of two people being involved had occurred to me.’

  ‘And then,’ said Paul, warming to his work, ‘have you considered the significance of the blood trail?’

  ‘But there wasn’t a blood trail.’

  ‘That’s what is so significant, old boy. I don’t believe one man could dart a recently decapitated corpse from the dairy to the river without leaving blood-spots, even granted that the top of the mac was well buttoned over the neck.’

  ‘The thunder rain might have washed the blood-spots away, you know. And anyway, the corpse wouldn’t have been bleeding any more by then. But I agree, it’d have been much simpler if there had been two people to carry the body.’

  ‘Good-o! I’m glad you’ve come round to my way of thinking.’

  ‘But what two people?’ asked Nigel, a worried look on his face. ‘There aren’t many possible permutations and combinations at Plash Meadow. I can’t conceive any two of them planning such an elaborate affair. Robert and Janet? Lionel and Mara? Rennell and Robert? Lionel and Janet? Mara and Rennell? And so on. Take your pick: but none of the possible partnerships makes sense to me.’

  ‘You’re obsessed by the number two, old boy,’ said Paul, waving his pipe-stem airily at Nigel. ‘Why shouldn’t the whole lot of them have organised it? This Oswald was a menace to ’em all, in various degrees, wasn’t he?’

  Nigel nodded.

  ‘Well, then? The whole squadron was laid on for Operation Oswald. And a very good job they seem to have made of it—or would have, if Finny hadn’t gone skirmishing out into the middle of it. And very sorry I’d be to see any of ’em taken up for the job.’

  ‘No, no, Paul. Don’t let’s make the thing more fantastic than we need. People don’t commit murder in a shoal. Other crimes, yes. But not murder.’

  ‘I expect you’re right,’ said Paul, a far-away look in his eyes. ‘But isn’t murder always unreal? You remember Robert talking about the flash-point, that day we went to tea? Well, either you’ve planned your murder in phantasy, brooded over every detail beforehand, thought of your alibi and so on, or else it’s unpremeditated—a moment of madness. But, in a way, they’re both the same. There can’t be degrees of murder, because there’s no such thing as a cold-blooded murderer. There’s only a different flash-point. The chap who plans a murder never really believes he’ll commit it. Generally he never gets farther than the planning: there must be thousands of murders committed in phantasy every year. But just now and then the point is reached where the phantasies take charge and push the bloke over the edge. What I say is, this bloke is no more responsible for his action than if he’d struck down a total stranger in a moment of blind rage. Do I talk cock?’

  ‘I don’t agree with you. But it’s very interesting.’

  ‘That’s why I say all murder is unreal. Or put it like this—every murder is a case of possession: instantaneous or gradual doesn’t matter. The murderer is possessed by something not himself—by a stranger within—which compels him to do violence to himself no less than he does it to his victim. And afterwards—do you know, I can imagine myself having murdered someone and a year later genuinely not being sure whether it was a dream or a reality. Once the wound caused to myself by the self-violence had healed over—and nature’d do that quickly enough—I’d go about my affairs as carefree as any other citizen.’

  Nigel was pondering Paul Willingham’s words as he walked back to Ferry Lacey. He had had supper at the farm and arranged that Paul should invite Vanessa Seaton to stay there if affairs at Plash Meadow took the ugly turn which Nigel feared. Paul had been talking through his hat, of course, he reflected now. But he had indirectly put his finger, once again, on a crucial point.

  Premeditation or not? Assume that Oswald Seaton’s murder was premeditated. What follows? First, the killer must know some little time before that Oswald is alive and back in England. Second, if the killer knows about the Oswald-Mara affair, he can be sure that Oswald will conceal his own identity out of self-protection. Now the only people at Plash Meadow who did not know about that affair were Finny Black, Vanessa and perhaps Lionel. Vanessa could be eliminated: Finny would be mentally incapable of planning a murder: Lionel would have no motive for it unless he had discovered the Oswald-Mara secret. Thirdly, a killer acquainted with this secret would have, so to speak, the ideal victim—a man believed to be dead years ago, a man who dare not reveal his own identity. Then why, it struck Nigel now with irresistible force, why murder him at Plash Meadow, the one place in the world where there would be a danger of the ‘body of the unknown man’ being associated with the Oswald Seaton of ten years ago? It seemed to follow, with the most unassailable logic, that because Oswald was murdered at Plash Meadow, his murder could not have been premeditated.

  At once the whole complicated and unsatisfactory mosaic of the case showed a different pattern to Nigel. A premeditated crime had been unthinkable, unless motivated by the desire either for security or for revenge on the murderer’s part. But an unpremeditated one opened up new possibilities—a sudden quarrel, for instance, or an accident; or even, it strangely occurred to Nigel, sheer fright—the shock of seeing, on that lurid, storming night, one whom the killer might have every reason for believing a ghost. . . .

  At ten o’clock the nex
t morning, Nigel strolled across to the Old Barn. He had awoken early, to find a certain phrase ringing in his head almost as if it had just been spoken into his sleeping ear. ‘We all had Oswald on our minds just then.’ Rennell Torrance had given this as an explanation for the horror he had shown when confronted by Mara’s clay head of Robert. As Nigel had pointed out, much to Rennell’s discomfiture, this statement did not make sense, because it had not been known at the time, except presumably to the murderer, that the murdered man was Oswald. Now, if it turned out that Rennell had seen Oswald on the fatal night, his alarm at the likeness of the portrait-head would be explained. But, ‘we all had Oswald on our minds just then’—was that ‘all’ merely a defensive turn of phrase, or could it by any chance be truth, supporting Paul Willingham’s absurd suggestion that every one at Plash Meadow had been in a conspiracy to remove Oswald?

  No, thought Nigel, this won’t do: I convinced myself last night that Oswald’s murder was unpremeditated. Well, the murder might have been, but the elaborate effort to conceal it could still have been a communal one. Lack of premeditation does not imply that there was no conspiracy. How many of them, then, were accomplices after the fact? It must have been pretty soon after the fact, too. ‘Oh, bosh, it’s fantastic,’ he muttered to himself, remembering the pleasant family breakfast he had taken only an hour ago—Lionel and Vanessa mildly chaffing each other; Janet Seaton discussing plans for the day, for a picnic up the river; her husband, at the head of the table, smiling at his children, talking to Nigel about Paul Willingham, then leaving his coffee half finished to slip upstairs and resume work on the poem which impatiently awaited him. None of them seemed apprehensive, or even curious, about the statement which, as Nigel had told them the previous night, Rennell Torrance was to make this morning. Their only worry appeared to be the weather, which was clouding over and threatening the projected picnic. As Nigel entered the old barn, a few drops of rain began to fall.

  Superintendent Blount was already there, with one of Inspector Gates’ men who had come to relieve Sergeant Bower. Blount had cleared a space on one of the littered tables in the studio. Rennell Torrance, slumped in a basket-chair, pointedly ignored Nigel as he entered. The sound of a vacuum cleaner could be heard from upstairs; Rennell’s flamboyant and shoddy canvases blushed hotly on the walls, relics of a misspent life.