by Bruce, Leo
‘Not lately he hasn’t. He smashed his own bike up about three months ago and since then he generally seems to ride behind one of the other lads. Especially one of the two that had long hair same as his. The three of them were always about together, Des Grayne and young Phil White. They both had bikes and Ken would ride on the back of them. But not one of his own he hadn’t, not for a long time.’
‘What sort of lads are they, these two?’
‘Just ordinary. Same as they all are nowadays. That’s as far as I know. I don’t see a lot of people in the town because I work in the Canteen at the Plastics Factory and that means pretty long hours. I’m only here today because it’s my day off.’
‘So my little friend Liz manages to look after herself, I take it?’
‘She’s a handy little thing. •» She can do anything about the house. She’s only twelve you know. Since I lost my husband from a heart attack he had at the Works I’ve had to Go Out, you see. But Liz is quite safe to be left on her own. Of course she’s at school all day. I never asked you if you’d like a cup of tea? I’m just going to put the kettle on, if you feel like it.’
‘Thank you very much. I’m so glad you speak well of Kenneth Carver. I began to think no one had a good word to say for him.’
‘I’ll tell you who else will have.’
‘His mother?’
‘Not her. She’d never have a good word to say for anyone except herself. No, Mr Leng. He’s the organist, in the church here. You’ll find him a very nice fellow and he took quite an interest in Kenneth. He’s the choirmaster, too. Mind you, he doesn’t need to do it because he’s got plenty of money. His father left it him. But he likes playing the organ and that. Him and his wife are ever so good with the young people. I should think he’s the only one around here that took any interest in Kenneth. His parents certainly didn’t.’
‘I must go and see him,’ decided Carolus.
‘That’s right. He lives in that old house you see at the top of the hill by the church. Only his wife’s been away for a few weeks, I believe. She may be back now. She has a sister living in France and pops across every now and then. But anyway he’ll be there all right. Tell him Mrs Bodmin told you to ask about Kenneth. He’ll tell you there was a lot of good in the boy.’
‘Thank you, Mrs Bodmin.’
‘You must stay and have that cup of tea. It’s just ready.’
Over tea Carolus asked Mrs Bodmin when was the last time she had seen Kenneth.
‘Oh not for a week or more,’ she said. ‘I daresay Liz has seen him since then only she may not remember. Of course I haven’t told her what’s happened to Kenneth—Dutch she calls him. She was ever so fond of him and I don’t want to upset her. It upset me, I can tell you. When I first heard he’d been found over near Newminster lying in a gutter with not a stitch on, I thought whatever will happen next?’
‘It was very startling. And nobody seems to have a clue about it, except that it looks as though he’d been taken there on the pillion of a motor-cycle.’
‘Yes. So I heard. That may have been just to get rid of the body, mayn’t it? But I can’t think why anyone should want to do such a thing. Of course Des and Phil aren’t the only ones to have motor-bikes. All that skinhead lot have them and make no end of noise racing up and down the streets at night. Might have been anyone, so far as that goes. All I can say is I hope you find out about it. I really do.’
So Carolus thanked Mrs Bodmin for the tea and went out to his car. He felt he had done pretty well for the first day, though he had not a glimpse of anything definite yet.
He decided not to stay in Hartington but to telephone Mrs Stick to expect him in Newminster where he could think things over in the comfort of his own house. There was something ugly about Hartington—and not only about the various small factories and council houses. An ugly spirit, he thought, malicious and jealous. He would be glad to be away from the place in the hours of darkness.
Mrs Stick greeted him rather disapprovingly.
‘There’s only scraps for dinner,’ she said, ‘you having told me you didn’t expect to be back.’
Carolus was inclined to rate as rather better than scraps the Sole Mornay and cold Guinea-fowl, (Pint a dew to Mrs Stick) which his housekeeper produced for him, but he only smiled approval.
‘Mr Gorringer’s just rung up,’ said Mrs Stick when she brought Carolus’s coffee. ‘He wanted to know if you were back so I had to tell him. He’s coming round in half-an-hour he says.’
‘Thank you, Mrs Stick. Don’t wait up if you want to go to bed.’
‘Not yet I don’t. Stick’s quite taken to the telly since you gave us the coloured one, sir. He doesn’t seem to like to leave it at night.’
In less than the time he had anticipated he heard Mr Gorringer’s ring at the bell and in a few moments the Headmaster had joined him by the fire.
‘Well, Deene. So it’s once more into the breach, dear friends. I hear you are engaged in a new investigation?’
‘True. I want to find out who murdered the youth found by Stick on the Boxley Road.’
‘I glanced at the details in the Newminster Gazette this morning,’ admitted Mr Gorringer. ‘A sordid affair it seems.’
‘All murders are sordid,’ retorted Carolus.
‘I do not deny it. But I cannot help wondering sometimes why you are so deeply interested in them, in that case.’
‘Perhaps you have a point there,’ said Carolus rather wearily. ‘Did you know that Hollingbourne had the boy as a paying guest some years ago?’
‘Impossible, surely, Deene. The boy was of the artisan class, I gathered.’
‘Hollingbourne explained to me that the boy’s father, who is a factory foreman, could afford to get rid of his son for a time and Mrs Hollingbourne accepted him into her family circle. They regretted it.’
‘I should think so. Did the boy give much trouble?’
‘You must ask Hollingbourne. At all events the poor little wretch is dead and no one but one young detective named Grimsby seems to be much interested in the matter.’
‘So you are drawn to investigate. You do not, I hope, forget the fact that term begins in three weeks’ time?’
Carolus smiled. ‘There is plenty of time to win this game and thrash the … Upper Fifth too.’
‘I perceive you are being frivolous, Deene. We abandoned corporal punishment several years ago. Have you any theory about the case in hand?’
‘None yet,’ said Carolus. ‘I only started my enquiries today.’
‘I see. They will doubtless take you into murky waters. A boy of barely sixteen murdered, it would seem, by ruffians scarcely older than him.’
‘I’ve no idea who murdered the boy,’ said Carolus. ‘I certainly have not accepted as yet the theory, current in Hartington, that other youths were guilty.’
‘But you haven’t rejected it?’
‘No. I haven’t begun to consider more than vaguely.’
‘Ah well. We know your methods. I’ve no doubt dawn will break before long. In the meantime let us discuss the coming term. You are, I believe, to tackle the Corn Laws with the Upper Fifth. A fascinating subject.’
‘Do you think so? I always found it a bore at school. Have a drink, Headmaster?’
‘Thank you, Deene. A suggestion of your excellent brandy.’
Carolus poured out a good two fingers and Mr Gorringer sipped appreciatively.
‘I trust,’ he said, ‘that you will allow me to collaborate in some small measure if the situation demands it?’
‘Thank you. I will keep you informed.’
Pleased with that assurance Mr Gorringer soon afterwards took his leave.
Chapter Five
Next day Carolus planned to call first on the dead boy’s mother and then to see the choirmaster Warton Leng. But when he arrived at the house where Estelle Carver lived with Justus Delafont, who had been variously described as a ‘West Indian’ ‘a Jamaican’ and ‘an African’ he rang in vain at
the front door. After a few moments a window in the house next door was opened.
‘She’s down at the Maison Chic,’ said a female voice. ‘Having her hair done. Did you want something?’
‘Just a few words with Mrs Carver,’ Carolus explained.
The woman next door who was youngish and smiled easily, said, ‘Delafont, she calls herself now. You better not say Carver. She doesn’t like that. Though everybody knows what her real name is.’
‘Thanks for the advice,’ said Carolus.
‘Who shall I say called?’ When Carolus did not immediately answer, the neighbour supplied suggestions. ‘Was it about the hire purchase?’ she asked. ‘I know she meant to pay it this week. Or are you from the Health Insurance people? It can’t be about her mother’s pension again. She only settled all that last month. If it’s those books that were left here she doesn’t want them. She said you were to take them away if you came. Or have you come about her son being found dead? She says she’s not going to talk about that if anyone asks.’
‘I think I had better come back later,’ said Carolus.
‘She’ll want to know who it was,’ the neighbour said. ‘Unless you’re from the Union? If so you’d better see Mr Delafont and he won’t be home till this evening. You can’t be the Jehovah’s Witnesses because they always come in pairs. I know she’s paid for the milk up to last week. I must tell her something.’
‘Just tell her a Mr Deene called and will come back this afternoon,’ said Carolus.
‘All right. I will. She’ll be home some time this morning. She’s only gone to have her hair done, like she does every Thursday. Only she’s going to have a change this week, she told me. More round the back of the head.’
‘Quite,’ said Carolus.
‘She’s a good customer to Mr Barnet, that’s who keeps the Maison Chic. She takes a lot of notice of her appearance. Always has done, ever since I’ve known her.’
Carolus smiled and moved towards his car.
‘I’ll tell her you’ve been,’ the neighbour called after him.
‘Thank you.’
‘She’ll be home all the afternoon, as far as I know.’
‘Good.’
Carolus got safely into his car. He fancied as he started the engine that the neighbour’s voice was still faintly audible.
‘He lives in that old house you see on the hill by the church,’ Mrs Bodmin had said of Warton Leng, but Carolus had not stopped to make enquiries of Mrs Carver’s neighbour, guessing that it would mean a long delay. He drove on and found a house which answered to the description. He thought as he examined its red brick front and eight-paned windows that it was a charming piece of eighteenth-century architecture to find surrounded by the ugly modern dwellings which made up most of Hartington.
The door was opened by a neat little Sam Weller of a man with a polishing cloth in his hand.
‘Mr Leng?’ Carolus asked.
‘No. I’m his friend Skilly,’ said the man.
‘Could I see Mr Leng?’
‘I expect you could. He’s in his study. This way.’
Mr Skilly opened a door and said—‘Warton, someone to see you!’ Then left Carolus to go in.
Carolus found Warton Leng a benevolent-looking individual in his fifties, that was to say some ten years older than Carolus judged Skilly.
‘I know all about you,’ Leng greeted Carolus. ‘You’re trying to find out who was responsible for the death of poor young Carver. I’ll do anything I can to help you.’
‘Thanks,’ said Carolus. ‘Most of the other inhabitants of this town seem to think I’m wasting my time. Either that or they practically say it was a good riddance.’
‘I know,’ said Leng. ‘He wasn’t popular. He came from what the more sanctimonious of muck-rakers call “a broken home”.’
‘But you befriended the boy?’
‘Or exploited him. I don’t know quite which. He had a fine voice. But he went about with a rotten crowd of layabouts.’
‘Des Grayne and Phil White,’ supplied Carolus.
‘Not only those two. He seemed to know all the young blackguards in Hartington.’
‘But not the so-called skinheads surely?’
‘I don’t know about that. There was a fellow named Bodmin who belonged to that lot…’
Carolus managed to nod carelessly. He had no intention of using Mrs Bodmin’s introduction to Leng. ‘What about him?’ he asked.
‘A particularly unpleasant young villain. He had it in for Dutch.’
‘They all had, so I’ve heard.’
‘But this one, Gil Bodmin, particularly. He was the cousin of a small girl…’
‘Liz,’ said Carolus quietly.
‘You seem to know more than I can tell you.’
‘I had never heard of this character. But the name can’t be usual. I’ve been to see Mrs Bodmin.’
‘Yes, that’s his aunt. But Mrs Bodmin will have nothing to say to her lout of a nephew. She told poor Dutch to keep the little girl away from him and I’m sure he did.’
‘Do you think that Gil’s anger and spite at that was sufficient to get his crowd to work on Dutch?’
‘I shouldn’t think so. I know Gil had a lot of influence with the others. But there was nothing, that I know of, which actually suggests that the skinheads were responsible for Dutch’s death. If there was you wouldn’t have much difficulty in narrowing down your enquiries, but I think it would be a great mistake to suspect them just because they are so-called skinheads.’
‘I agree,’ said Carolus. ‘I should find any sort of guess at this point most dangerous. Besides, I have not even seen these famous skinheads yet.’
‘They use a pub called the Dragon chiefly.’
‘They drink then? By all accounts that’s a healthier taste than those of the long-haired boys who go in for pot.’
Leng smiled.
‘I can see you’re not very experienced in this sort of thing. Delinquency, I mean, not crime.’
‘Are you?’
‘I make it my business to know something about it.’
‘As a choirmaster?’
‘Well, yes. If you want to know. Skinheads and Greasers, as the Press call them, can’t be divided into two completely opposing factions. They have certain things in common. Some greasers take pot, some skinheads drink. But some of each do the other, if you see what I mean. Gil Bodmin, I believe, does both.’
‘What about your protégé, Dutch Carver?’
‘I don’t think he took pot. He may have had a pint occasionally.’
‘You knew him really well?’
‘I had known him for a long time. Can one say one knows any of these youngsters well, nowadays?’
‘You agree with Mrs Bodmin—he wasn’t a bad boy?’
‘I do. Yet—to be frank—I cannot pretend to have been altogether surprised when I heard the news.’
‘You mean, in an expressive idiom, he stuck his neck out?’
‘Something like that. We live in an age of violence.’
‘I see you don’t mean to tell me what are your suspicions,’ said Carolus.
‘I have none. I’m entirely at sea.’
‘The police theory, I gather,’ said Carolus, ‘is that he was killed on the Saturday afternoon or evening and taken over to be dumped by the Boxley Road near Newminster during the night of Saturday. There were marks on his wrists and ankles that suggest he was carried on the pillion seat of a motor-cycle, either unconscious or dead.’
‘So I understand.’
‘Doesn’t that make you suspect the skinheads?’
‘Not necessarily. It could have been one of his own crowd with whom he had fallen out. And his brother rides a motor-bike. We’re looking to you to decide that.’
‘I shall do my best. You don’t know of anyone who saw Dutch on the Saturday?’
‘Yes. My friend Skilly. Dutch came here at about two o’clock on Saturday afternoon. He asked for me but Skilly told him I’d gone up to to
wn to meet my wife. He seemed surprised at that because I usually go up on Friday. It was an exception for me to go on Saturday. Skilly asked him to come in but he didn’t wait. He told Skilly the repairs on his motor-bike were finished and he was going to get it from the garage.’
‘He was on foot, then?’
‘Yes, he smashed his motor-bike up some weeks ago.’
‘That doesn’t get us much farther, does it? He walked out of your front gate and from then till Sunday when my gardener Stick found his body in a ditch by the Boxley Road we know nothing of his movements. Or if he had any.’
Leng was thoughtful.
‘Do you know that road?’ he asked.
‘Of course. I come by it to Hartington—whenever I come to Hartington, which frankly isn’t often. Why?’
‘It’s dark and pretty deserted. But I shouldn’t have thought it was an ideal site for a murder.’
‘I see what you mean,’ said Carolus.
‘This thing has shaken me,’ said Leng. ‘Thank heavens my wife is back.’
‘What did she think of the boy?’
‘What we all did, I suppose. That he had a fine voice but was in many ways a young fool. I think she was quite fond of him in a way. We have no children of our own.’
‘And Mr Skilly?’
‘He’s my wife’s cousin. As a matter of fact I met her through him. He’s a very old friend. Lives with us here. I don’t think he had much opinion one way or the other about Dutch Carver. He’s chiefly interested in this house and garden. Domesticated type.’
‘I see. Well, Mr Leng, I am sure you will let me know if anything occurs to you which might help me find out the truth.’
‘I certainly will. Though of course I shall tell the police, too.’
‘Of course. They depend more than me on their technical knowledge of this sort of crime. Forensic chemistry and so on. I have to trust to my instincts.’
‘I’ve always got on pretty well with the police. I had to work with them during the War. I was in Field Security, you see.’
‘Were you? I was in a far less exciting outfit. Commandos. It seems a long time ago now.’
As Leng showed him out of the front door Carolus noticed a Daimler, of a violent yellow colour, in the stable yard. It had not been visible from the drive by which he had come in.