“Good God Almighty!” breathed Ferrall. “You don’t believe that, do you—?”
“Please, sir...” Hatchard held up his hand. “Let me finish! Your theory is,” he went on, turning again to Gale, “that somebody, who was very fond of Mrs. Meriton, discovered what had really happened to her, and killed Meriton, the motive being revenge. Is that right, sir?”
“That’s very well put, Hatchard,” said Gale. “It’s not quite as clear-cut as that, but you’ve got the gist of it—”
“It’s ridiculous!” exclaimed Ferrall angrily.
“If I may be allowed to put in a word,” said Major Chipingham with heavy sarcasm, “I think there’s little point in going on arguing about it. Either Gale is right, or he’s wrong...”
“Did you work that out all by yourself, Chippy?” demanded Gale with a shout of laughter. “If you want to prove whether I’m right or not, the evidence is there—almost under your nose, d’you see? Find Fay Meriton’s body...”
“If you had let me finish,” said the Chief Constable, very red in the face, but valiantly controlling his temper, “instead of going off into one of your absurd ranting fits, that is exactly what I was going to say.”
“You’ll only go wasting your time,” said Ferrall. “Fay ran away—she left that letter behind to say so. How are you going to get over that?”
“Letters left behind by suicides and what-not have been explained away before,” remarked Gale. “If there’s no body, we won’t have to bother about the letter. If there is a. body...” He shrugged his shoulders.
“If there is a body, sir,” said Inspector Hatchard thoughtfully, “then I don’t think we’ll have to look very far for Meriton’s murderer.”
“Eh, what’s that?” said Major Chipingham. He frowned, and then his face cleared. “Oh, yes... I see what you mean...”
So did Alan.
That formidable old man with the aggressive, beak-like nose and determined mouth...
Given sufficient incentive, he thought, Colonel Ayling would be quite capable of murder...
*****
Like the quick-match which is used to ignite individual fireworks in a set-piece, the reason for the sudden activity of the police at Sorcerer’s House flashed through the village of Ferncross.
In the Three Witches, Mr. Jellyberry, beaming in the midst of a clamour of speculation, dispensed beer with a prodigal hand and added his quota to the argument, nodding with ponderous agreement, or shaking his head in equally weighty negative.
Miss Flappit, in a seventh heaven of excitement, shot all over the village, like a noisy and virulent wasp, buzzing and stinging wherever she alighted, until, at the heralding clatter of her ancient bicycle, the inhabitants fled to the sanctuary of their houses, and even that long-suffering man, the vicar, locked himself in his study and refused to emerge.
People met in the small shops that dotted the narrow High Street, and, forgetting what they had come to purchase, entered into long discussions concerning this unheard-of sensation, and drifted out again, without buying anything, to the annoyance of the shopkeepers and the detriment of trade.
Colonel Ayling, when the news reached him, scowled, set his face rigidly, and refused to discuss the matter at all, and little Mr. Veezey broke the habit of many years and bought himself three double whiskies instead of his usual two.
Many and varied were the stories that circulated in, and around, Ferncross during that period before there was any authentic news at all. A body had been discovered in the old water-butt; five bodies had been found buried in the garden; no bodies had been discovered, but a vast hoard of money had been unearthed from under the rotting floorboards of an attic; the skeleton of a man, identified as that of Cagliostro, had been found, bricked up in the wall of the Long Room, and, on being moved, had vanished in a flash of blue flame…
These and many other stories, all equally exaggerated and without foundation, swept through the village with the speed of light.
Sensation, in excelsis, had come to Ferncross.
The news spread, and an army of newspaper reporters invaded the village, filling the bars of the three public houses, and clamouring round the rusty iron gate of Threshold House, insistent for information. Miss Flappit, baulked of her legitimate prey, found balm and solace among these new arrivals. The story of Veezey’s threat, on the bridge over the Dark Water, was related with gusto, and that unfortunate individual found himself besieged. They tried the same thing with Simon Gale, but the appalling Mrs. Gull, in a fury of righteous indignation, turned a hose on them and they retired with their ardour considerably dampened.
In the midst of all this, a stolid Hatchard proceeded quietly and systematically with his search, assisted by four expert detectives, requisitioned from the C.I.D. of the neighbouring town of Barnsford. Secure behind a police guard, which had strict injunctions that nobody was to be allowed past the gate, except with the express permission of Hatchard himself, they went methodically to work.
There was much speculation at Bryony Cottage concerning the outcome.
“I don’t believe they’ll find anything,” declared Henry Onslow-White. “The idea of Paul Meriton killing his wife is simply absurd. Whatever she did, he wouldn’t have hurt a hair of her head. It’s just a wild theory of Simon’s. I’m surprised the police took any notice of it.”
“I’m not so sure,” said Flake. “I always thought there was something queer about Fay...”
“Maybe there was,” mumbled her father, his mouth full of toast and marmalade—they were having breakfast in the pleasant little dining-room—”She may have been as mad as a hatter, but what I’m saying is that Paul couldn’t have killed her. He just wasn’t capable of such a thing.” He stopped breathlessly, and wiped his mouth with his napkin.
“It might have been an accident,” suggested Alan. “If she’d had a hysterical attack or something, and become violent... I guess it could have happened like that...”
“Why should he conceal the fact?” Onslow-White demanded. “The natural thing to do, if that had happened, would be to call up a doctor and notify the police. Why didn’t he do that?”
“He may have been scared that they’d think he killed her,” said the American. “A man in a panic will—”
“Paul wasn’t the type to get in a panic over anything,” broke in Onslow-White, shaking his large head. “Fay Meriton ran away. There’s that letter, in her own handwriting, to prove it. What more do they want?”
He passed over his empty cup for more coffee.
“I don’t think you’re quite right, you know, dear,” remarked Mrs. Onslow-White placidly, as she took the cup. “And I don’t think Simon is quite right, either…”
“What do you mean, Mother?” asked Flake.
“Well, dear,” said Mrs. Onslow-White,’ smiling at her affectionately. “I don’t think Fay did run away, and I don’t think Paul killed her.”
“Then what did happen to her?” asked her husband.
“I really don’t know,” said Mrs. Onslow-White, pouring hot milk lavishly into the coffee. “But whatever it was, it was neither of those things.” She handed the fresh cup of coffee across to her husband. “You see,” she went on, “Fay would never have left Paul. That would have meant giving up her house and the money, and she would never have done that.”
“The thing that really seems horrible,” said Flake, with a little shiver, “is that room…tucked away in those mouldering ruins…”
Alan remembered that crawling of the flesh he had experienced when they reached the attic floor of the old house. And the focal point of that fear had been behind the locked door...
“What did she do—up there—among the dust and cobwebs?” Flake went on, resting her elbow on the table and cupping her chin in her hand. “Any normal woman would have been scared to death...”
But Fay Meriton was not normal....
“Well,” grunted Henry Onslow-White, dropping his crumpled napkin on the table, and hauling himself out o
f his chair with difficulty. “I’m going down to the village. Does anybody want anything?”
Mrs. Onslow-White was, apparently, in urgent need of a number of things. Alan and Flake left her giving a detailed list to her husband, and strolled out into the garden. It was a lovely morning. The heat, that airless, pressing heat, had gone, but it was still very warm.
“What shall we do?” asked Alan.
“Let’s walk across the meadows to Threshold House,” she suggested, with one of those quick, sidelong glances which made his pulses tingle.
“You’re a ghoul!” Alan laughed. “But I feel rather the same way, myself!”
That walk across the sunlit meadows, although they were unaware of it at the time, was to lead them into the second, and infinitely more horrible, phase of this queer business. Even as they left the garden of Bryony Cottage, the beginning of what Simon Gale afterwards called ‘the topsy-turviness’ was taking place behind the high, enclosing wall of Sorcerer’s House.
But they knew nothing of this until later.
In the bright, warm sunlight of that morning, Alan felt a surging of the blood; a joyous delight in the sheer fact of just living. Ghosts and goblins had no place here...
“Race you to that tree,” he cried suddenly.
He reached it, yards ahead of Flake, and waited for her to come up with elaborate unconcern. When she did, with flushed face and dancing eyes, they both leaned against the thick trunk of the old oak and relaxed.
“Oh,” she said, when she had recovered her breath. “That was nice...” She shook back her heavy, glossy black hair. “I’m glad you came here…”
“So am I,” said Alan.
“Oh, look,” said Flake suddenly, “there’s Avril...”
Alan turned his head, following the direction of her gaze. Avril Ferrall was walking slowly towards them, her head bent and eyes fixed on the ground. She was moving like a sleep-walker, completely oblivious of her surroundings. Until she was within a few yards of them, she did not see them. When she did, it was with a start of surprise.
“Hello,” she said, her rich, deep voice dry and husky. Her eyes were cloudy and smeared, the lids puffy. Alan thought she looked very ill, and wondered what had caused her to look like that
“Isn’t it ...awful... all this?” She nodded in the direction of the old house. From where they stood they could see the ruined gable, standing out clear in the sun against its background of trees, and the window of the Long Room, like an open, black mouth.
“Well, it’s not very pleasant,” answered Flake. “What’s the matter, Avril? You look really ill...”
Avril brushed a hand across her face. “I...I’m all right. I didn’t...sleep very well…last night. I thought I’d come up here this morning…and try and find out what was happening…but there’s a lot of reporters round the gate. I didn’t want them to...see me, so I…turned back.”
“They wouldn’t tell you anything, anyway,” said Alan. “We shall all hear fast enough if they find…what they’re looking for.”
“Yes, I suppose so,” said Avril. She looked at each of them uncertainly, and suddenly the tears welled up into the smeary eyes. “Oh, God!” she burst out violently. “Why did Paul have to die like that...”
She turned away abruptly and ran, stumbling over the grass…
“What the heck’s the matter with her?” said Alan. “Has she gone crackers…?”
“Don’t you know what’s the matter with her?” asked Flake in a low voice, staring after the jerky figure, zig-zagging across the sunlit meadow. “It’s easy enough to see, now. She was crazily in love…with Paul...”
They moved on in silence, but the greater part of the joyousness had gone out of the morning.
Presently they came in sight of the entrance to Threshold House, and stopped. Some sort of excitement appeared to be going on there. A clamouring group of newspaper reporters clustered round the rusty iron gate, out of which a uniformed police constable suddenly forced his way. Ignoring the barrage of questions which were shot at him, he stood looking down the narrow road. He was joined, after a moment, by a worried-looking Hatchard.
“I guess something’s happened,” said Alan. “Let’s see if we can find out what it’s all about...”
From somewhere in the distance there came a staccato pop-pop-pop-pop followed by a loud explosion, a succession of further pops and two more explosions even louder than the first...
“That’s Simon’s motor-cycle,” said Flake, clutching Alan’s arm. “It always makes that noise...”
The popping and the explosions became louder. Presently, to the accompaniment of the most appalling din Alan had ever heard, and surrounded by a cloud of blue smoke, a motor-bicycle, painted a vivid orange colour, shot up the road, scattered the reporters, and skidded to an abrupt stop within an inch of Inspector Hatchard. The huge figure of Simon Gale, in shorts and an even more violent-coloured shirt than Alan had seen him in before, vaulted out of the saddle.
“Hello, hello!” he cried, thrusting the motor-cycle into the hands of an astonished reporter. “Here I am, Hatchard. Where’s Chippy?”
“Come on,” said Alan, grabbing Flake by the hand. “We may be able to get in on this...”
He rushed her up to Gale and the harassed inspector.
“Aha, it’s you two, hey?” said Gale, with a wide grin. “Come on—let’s get inside out of this rabble!”
He flung a great arm round each of them, and propelled them through the gate. Hatchard slipped in behind them and the police constable dragged it shut, and stood with his back against it, stolidly deaf to the howls of protest from the frustrated newspaper men.
“Now, then,” said Gale, turning to Hatchard, “why did you send for me? Let’s have it!”
“The Chief Constable’s up at the house, sir,” said the inspector. “I think we’d better wait until—”
“Rubbish!” cried Gale impatiently. “Chippy won’t mind... What’s the news?”
“Well, sir,” said Hatchard. “We’ve found the body...”
“You have?” exclaimed Gale, rubbing his hands in great delight. “I’ll bet Chippy’s face was a sight for the gods when he heard that! Now d’you see what comes of thinking...”
“Yes, sir,” said Inspector Hatchard, with a rather peculiar look. “We found the body of a woman... Only, you see, it’s the wrong woman. It’s not Fay Meriton!”
CHAPTER NINE
If the news that the police were looking for a body at Sorcerer’s House had caused a sensation in Ferncross, the fact that they had actually found one caused an even greater sensation. That it should have turned out to be the wrong body only added to the general excitement.
The entire village buzzed like a gigantic wasps’ nest, and no one buzzed more loudly than Miss Flappit. Wherever gossip and speculation was particularly rife, Miss Flappit materialized in the centre of it, joining in the wildest suggestions with zest, and offering even wilder and more unlikely ones of her own. Paul Meriton became, in turn, a monster, so diabolically evil that Landru and Christie had been almost Archangels by comparison, who had spent his time murdering women, and filling Threshold House with the bodies of his victims, or the victim, himself, of a homicidal maniac who prowled about the district with blood-lust in his heart. Miss Flappit’s convictions inclined to this latter theory, and, with many a meaning look and innuendo, she made it clearly understood that in her opinion there was no need to look very far for the perpetrator of these horrible crimes. Again and again she retold the story of Mr. Veezey’s threat on the bridge, and with each repetition it became more bloodcurdling.
“I know what I would do, if I were the police,” she declared, with a significant twitch of her shoulders and a sharp glint in her small eyes.
And her listeners were left in no doubt.
The reporters, augmenting the guarded statement issued by Inspector Hatchard with such of these rumours as were printable, besieged the tiny post-office to telephone lurid stories to their vario
us newspapers.
The body, which remained unidentified, was that of a young woman, whose age, according to the doctors, had been between eighteen and twenty. She had died from a heavy blow which had fractured the skull, and, judging from the state of the corpse, had been dead for a considerable time. The body had been found buried under the tiles of a small out-building which had once been a wash-house, and it was because these tiles had shown traces of having been re-laid that had caused the police to search there in the early stages of their investigation.
“You’ve been a great help,” said Major Chipingham sarcastically, at a conference with Simon Gale and Inspector Hatchard, to which Alan Boyce had succeeded in wangling himself. “All you’ve done Gale, is to present us with another problem—as if we hadn’t enough to contend with as it was! You’ve just made the whole thing more difficult, that’s all you’ve done...”
“Now, just stop blowing off steam, an’ listen to me!” cried Gale. “If it hadn’t been for me you’d never have known about this other murder...”
“And a fat lot of good it’s done us,” broke in Major Chipingham, now purple in the face. “All your damned clever theories about Fay Meriton—bah!”
“Don’t you start shouting too soon, you old pessimist!” retorted Gale. “You just wait an’ see about Fay Meriton. What are you trying to tell me? That you’d rather not have found out about this other murder, because it makes it more difficult—?”
“Now, now, sir,” interrupted Inspector Hatchard soothingly. “That’s not it at all. But it has rather put a spanner in the works, so to speak. You see what we’re landed with now, sir? You thought we’d find the body of Mrs. Meriton, instead of which we find the body of an unknown young woman...”
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