“You don’t mean she’s living there?” Bobby asked incredulously. “It doesn’t look as if anyone could.”
“She says she couldn’t find anywhere else,” Day-Bell answered. “She says she can’t afford hotel charges, and besides, she likes to be on her own. She got a builder to make two or three rooms at the back fit to live in, and she pays a small rent. There was a had fire some years ago, and the place had been left entirely deserted till she came.”
“Do you mind if I get down and have a look?” Bobby asked. “I won’t be more than a minute or two.”
Though a little surprised by the request, Mr Day-Bell complied. Bobby alighted accordingly, and, his brief tour of inspection completed, came back and said:
“Mrs Asprey doesn’t seem to be there. Anyhow, I saw nothing of her. Looks to me as if the whole place might collapse any moment.”
“That’s what people are saying,” agreed Day-Bell. “A strong wind might easily bring the whole thing down. Just as well she’s not there, though,” he added, “or you might have had a warm reception. There’s been talk of sending some inspector or another to see if it were safe for her to remain. When she heard of it she said she would take a broom to anyone she found trespassing. I don’t doubt it myself.”
“A bit of a tartar,” Bobby remarked. “I wonder she’s not nervous, living alone in a place like that with not a neighbour in sight.”
“I don’t fancy Mrs Asprey is much given to nervousness,” Day-Bell told him. “A rather formidable old lady indeed. Two Mile End is not in Hillings parish, but when she first came I called to see if I could be of any help. She was civil enough, but I didn’t feel myself encouraged to repeat my visit.”
“She doesn’t stay there all the time, does she?” Bobby asked. “Mr Pyle said something about a flat in Bristol.”
“She comes and goes in the most unexpected fashion,” Day-Bell replied. “For all you can tell, she may be back in Bristol now. I’ve never been able to understand why she comes at all.”
“Does she ever visit Janet Merton’s grave?” Bobby asked.
“Hagen tells me he sees her there occasionally. Sitting on the churchyard wall, eating sandwiches. It rather worries him. She takes no notice of anyone and never speaks except just to answer Hagen’s good day.”
“Do you think she’s quite sane?” Bobby asked.
“Well, there’s certainly nothing you can take hold of,” Day-Bell replied in a rather deprecating tone. “There was some gossip at first, I believe, but that’s died down, and no one takes much notice of her. Miss Christabel Merton told me once that she thought Mrs Asprey came to triumph in death as her dead rival triumphed in life. I don’t know.”
“It might be something like that,” Bobby agreed thoughtfully. “The living wife, the dead mistress, and life more than death. No one now to share her memories, no longer any cause for jealousy. Did Asprey return to her after Janet’s death, do you know?”
“He never left her,” Day-Bell said. “There was no open breach. He did not live long after Janet died.”
“A strange history,” Bobby said. He climbed back into the car and they drove on, his mind full of that picture of the silent wife eating her sandwiches by the side of the grave of her dead rival. He said: “It may be she wants to be sure the grave is undisturbed, the poems and the letters still there.” Then he said: “I don’t think it’s that, exactly.”
“The whole thing seems to me unpleasantly morbid,” declared Day-Bell, frowning. “I think it would be better if she stayed away.”
“Yes, it would be better if she stayed away,” Bobby agreed.
The road was still climbing ever more steeply towards the dark, overhanging mass of the Mercian moor, the country was becoming ever more desolate, more deserted looking. Mr Day-Bell’s car, of ancient date, was making heavy weather of it. They came to a notice-board where a side-track turned off. It announced ‘To Canbar Farm’, and underneath: ‘To Skeleton Farm’. Mr Day-Bell slowed down if that which is already a crawl can be said to slow down, for here they were on a particularly steep and bad stretch of the road.
“Canbar Farm,” he explained, “is Christabel Merton’s place. Too much for a young girl like her. Skeleton Farm is my son’s. The two used to be one farm, but forty or fifty years ago old Mr Merton, Janet’s father, was obliged to give up part—the part that is now Skeleton Farm. When it came vacant recently Duncan took it. Marginal land, as they call it now and a tenant not too easy to find. But Duncan seems to be getting on very well, though even during the war there was no attempt to bring it back into full cultivation.”
“Not a very attractive name,” Bobby suggested.
“Duncan thinks it’s most appropriate because it provides only a skeleton living and, besides, it helps with inspectors and agricultural committees and all the rest of what he calls the lunatic fringe. He claims that the name is worth a lot to him, since no one can expect much from a skeleton.” Here Mr Day-Bell paused to chuckle, evidently thinking this was an excellent joke. He resumed: “The name is said to come from skeletons found in one of the fields. Possibly relics of a last stand of the Mercians against what to-day would be called aggression when Mercia was overwhelmed by the Wessex invaders. At first the name was applied only to the one field, but when the farm was divided it was given to the whole of that half—third rather.”
“Old memories still live about here, then?” Bobby asked.
“I sometimes think old memories never die,” Day-Bell answered. “Except in towns. But this new machine age may kill them everywhere. I really think if you raised an alarm in Penton High Street that the Welsh were coming, every man would hurry home for spear and shield and helm.”
By now Hillings church tower was in sight—an old, old grey tower, said to date from Saxon days, but more likely of Norman erection, though possibly pre-Conquest. There was no sign of any village, though, for only two dwellings were visible. One was an austere, square house, in grey stone with a slate roof, facing due north and much overhung by the dark mass of the moor behind. Bobby decided it had probably been erected, on strictly utilitarian lines, about the beginning of the last century. It stood some distance from the church on the edge of the shallow depression or hollow in which the church stood, and it had rather the air of wishing to deny that any connection existed between them. Or even of trying to escape from the hollow back to the moor above.
The other dwelling was a small cottage, looking, Bobby thought, much more comfortable and habitable. It, too, was of grey stone, but it had recently been given a coat of whitewash, from the thatched roof to the ground, so that it positively shone in the late afternoon sunshine. Then, too, dormer windows broke the monotony of the flat, square façade. It faced due south, as the larger building faced due north, and also, farther removed from the moor, it seemed by it less overhung—overwhelmed might be a better word. It was adjacent to, and overlooked, the churchyard, and Bobby took it to be the dwelling of the sexton, John Hagen, Mr Day-Bell had mentioned more than once. The larger house was no doubt the rectory.
Before it, Mr Day-Bell brought his car to a standstill, and he and Bobby alighted. Mr Day-Bell went off to open the door of a shed that evidently served as garage, and Bobby stood looking up at the moor above and wondering what had become of the village this church was presumably intended to serve. Day-Bell came back and, guessing Bobby’s thoughts, observed:
“There was a much larger population here in earlier days. Always very widely dispersed; but the church served as a rallying point, the centre of all interests, as it should be still. To-day there are only between a hundred and a hundred and fifty inhabited houses in the whole parish. Once the moor provided a living for the cottagers. Gathering reeds for rush-lights or thatching. Material for brooms, too, or cutting peat or keeping flocks of geese. Innumerable activities of that sort. And of course seasonal work on the Penton farms. All dead now, but while it lasted an independent life for which there was much to be said.”
Bobby made so
me conventional remark about it being a pity. Then he said:
“You were speaking of Mr Pyle’s caravan being parked on the moor. Is it far?”
“About a quarter of an hour’s walk or thereabouts. You see it as soon as you get to the crest of the moor.”
“I think I should like to have a look at it,” Bobby said. “That is, if I may leave you for a few minutes.”
“You don’t think Mr Pyle can be there already?” Day-Bell asked, slightly alarmed. “He couldn’t have started before us, could he?”
“Oh, it’s not that,” Bobby said reassuringly. “But I do feel a little curious about the man you saw, the chap who told you he was in charge. I’m wondering if he is as rude to everyone as he was to you, and there is the bare possibility that he wasn’t in charge at all, but only a sneak thief taking advantage of an unattended caravan to see what he could pick up. By your description he hardly seems the sort of person a man in Mr Pyle’s position would be likely to employ.”
“I never thought of that,” Day-Bell said. “He seemed so very much at home.”
“Well, I think I had better make sure,” Bobby said. “And I am rather wondering what made Mr Pyle take to caravanning. I should have expected a Rolls-Royce and a smart hotel would be more in his line.”
He went off then with his long, swift strides. The quarter of an hour by which Mr Day-Bell had measured the distance seemed, reduced to terms of length, to be about a quarter of a mile, and Bobby, who thought he was almost standing still if he went at a rate of less than four miles to the hour, covered the distance in five minutes or less. No one was visible at first, but as he drew nearer the door opened and there appeared that unprepossessing individual of the bandy legs and the broken nose Day-Bell had described with such feeling. With a fair degree of accuracy, too, though the fearsome squint was in fact not much more than a cast in the left eye. Indignation at the reception given him had no doubt led Day-Bell unconsciously to elaborate just a little. Not that there was much need, for a more scoundrelly looking ruffian no one could wish to see or be more reluctant to meet on a dark night in a lonely spot.
He stood there at the head of the short flight of steps leading up to the caravan door, hostile and sullen, clearly preparing no warm welcome, when all at once his expression changed, at least as far as the truculence went, for that dropped from him like a superfluous coat thrown off in a hurry. The sullenness remained; and a glance first over his shoulder and then another sideways suggested that he was meditating taking refuge in the interior of the caravan, or else perhaps in flight. But it was too late now for either alternative; and he stood there, with his shoulders hunched and his head down, like a baited bull waiting for a fresh assault.
‘Item Sims, and he knows me all right,’ Bobby said to himself and then called out cheerfully:
“Oh, good afternoon. Mr Pyle’s caravan, isn’t it? Is he there?”
“No, he ain’t,” Sims replied, eyeing Bobby distrustfully. “Not come back yet and not expected. Left me in charge, he did.”
“Oh, well, it doesn’t matter,” Bobby said. “Tell him Mr Owen called, will you? and say I’ll write. Don’t forget. Tell him it was Mr. Owen. I met him in Penton this afternoon, and there was something I forgot to say. Good afternoon. Sorry to have troubled you.”
With that he turned and went, and as long as he was still in sight that sullen, watchful, waiting figure remained motionless in the caravan doorway.
CHAPTER VI
MR PYLE’S ENTERPRISE
MR DAY-BELL was just completing the garaging of his car as Bobby came swinging down from the moor, and he looked very surprised to see Bobby back so soon.
“Isn’t the caravan there now?” he asked. “Couldn’t you find it?”
“Oh, yes,” Bobby answered. “It’s there all right, and the same fellow you saw is still in charge, so that’s all right, too. If he were a sneak thief of any sort, he would have cleared off long ago. An ugly-looking customer. Looks are nothing to go by, though, and I didn’t give him any chance to be rude. I asked if Mr Pyle were there, and when he said he wasn’t I came away.”
Mr Day-Bell was secretly disappointed at so tame a conclusion. Deep down in his unconscious there had existed a kind of wistful hope that the unpardonable insolence shown to him might be shown to Bobby, too; and, if so, that then Bobby might return, bringing with him a handcuffed prisoner under arrest for obstructing the police in the execution of their duty or something of the sort. Not much good being a high police officer if you couldn’t arrest people like this rascally caravan attendant. Probably the next thing would be the discovery of Mr Pyle with his throat cut. Or perhaps never heard of again. Like Mr Thorne, the former incumbent. A dead body lying in those remote and lonely recesses of the moor might well not be found for years, or never found at all. Mr Day-Bell said something to this effect, and Bobby did not contradict him, for he himself was aware of misgivings not very different.
Nothing to be done, though. Mr Pyle would certainly have been informed by Sandy McKie of Sims’s background and record, since it was through him that Sims had been engaged. No use repeating a warning already given; even if Bobby had felt, as he did not, that he would have had himself any right to speak of Sims’s past while there still remained the possibility that Sims was being offered, and was availing himself of, an opportunity to make a fresh start. Now also Sims knew that whether Bobby had actually recognized him or no—and of that he could not be sure, since Bobby had been so careful to give no sign of being aware of his identity—he had at least been seen and spoken to by an officer of police. If good cause arose he would be quickly identified. ‘Of distinctive appearance’, as had been said once in a Court of Justice. Or, as it had been more crudely put from the witness-box:
“Know ’im again? Of course I do. With a mug like that as is more like the Zoo than anything ’uman.”
Warning had therefore been given in both quarters, and no other action could be taken. As always, the initiative was with the criminal. Nor in this case was there any real evidence that anything of an even remotely criminal nature was being planned, only the vague misgivings hovering as it were in Bobby’s mind. The Duke of Blegborough’s telegram. The unexplained disappearance of Mr Thorne and the rumours concerning it still current, it seemed. Mr Pyle’s arrival on the scene with so unlikely a companion as Item Sims. Old Mrs Asprey’s reported threat to shoot. Did all that add up to anything really serious? And if it did, what?
Troubling, Bobby thought, even though most probably there was nothing in it, and now Mr Day-Bell was saying something about having a cup of tea while they were awaiting the arrival of the Duke of Blegborough.
“If he comes, that is,” Day-Bell added, a little doubtfully. “He may have changed his mind, though the telegram didn’t read as if that were likely. Anyhow, I’ll light the oil-stove and put the kettle on. With the price we have to pay here and the difficulty of getting coal, I find oil more convenient and cheaper. I prefer it to the calor gas Duncan uses. You would like a cup of tea?”
“Oh, I’m the complete old woman when it comes to cups of tea,” Bobby told him. “I was wondering which part of the churchyard Janet Merton’s grave is in? I should like to see it.”
“It’s near Hagen’s cottage,” answered Day-Bell. “Visitors have worn a path to it you need only follow. If Hagen’s there, he’ll probably appear, if only to sell you postcards.”
Bobby went off accordingly, and as he went he tried to impress upon his memory every detail of the scene. Not at all probable, of course, that he would ever have to return, but if that should become necessary, in fog or mist or rain, perhaps, it would be well for him to have as clear a picture in his mind as possible. Unnecessary precaution, probably, but it was to this habit of trying to prepare for every possible contingency that he owed much of his success.
As he came nearer, he saw a motor-cycle leaning against the churchyard wall, near the small entrance gate. Coming towards him, from the direction of the cottage and the g
rave, was a tall, shambling young man with a long, narrow face—so long and narrow, indeed, it almost seemed as if Nature had experienced difficulty in fitting nose, mouth, and eyes into so restricted a framework. At any rate, these features were all disproportionately small, the mouth miniature, the nose little more than a blob, the eyes tiny, though sharp and intent-looking. There was a high, narrow forehead, its height accentuated by a tendency to baldness, and the face terminated in a chin equally long, narrow and pointed. He was wearing a loose jacket, a flowing tie, corduroy trousers. Taking no notice of Bobby, he hurried by, and soon Bobby heard the sound of the departing motor-cycle.
Walking on, Bobby came to the grave. A simple tombstone bore a conventional inscription, giving the dead woman’s name, and the dates of birth and death. The customary Scriptural text was missing. A stone kerb surrounded a grass centre, well tended, and a wreath, placed there presumably by admirer or sympathizer, was beginning to wither.
No quieter or more peaceful spot could have been found for the conclusion of so passionate a tale of love, one that even yet had not entirely lost its power to move. Bobby was still standing by the grave, thinking how much of uncontrolled emotion had ended here, when the door of the cottage opened and a man came out and began to walk towards him.
John Hagen, the sexton, no doubt. He was short, strongly built, but with something of the scholar’s stoop, as of one who spent many hours bending over books. His head was noticeably large, his features good with clear blue eyes set, like Mr Pyle’s, unusually far apart, a high Roman nose, and a largish mouth cut in firm, straight lines above a strong, square chin. The whole impression was of strength and an almost ruthless determination that would allow nothing to stand between it and its goal. Bobby told himself that here was a man who could have made his mark in the outer world had he not chosen to follow his own private way—knowledge rather than success. As he came nearer, Bobby noticed that though he walked briskly, there was a slight tendency to drag one foot and that he held in his hand what looked like postcards.
Brought to Light: A Bobby Owen Mystery Page 6