Much of the road passed through arches of tall old trees, now almost in full spring leaf. As they travelled along, they could see a panorama of the flat extreme north of the Island with, to the north-east, the first signs of higher ground, rising gently to the tender little hills of Bride. The doctor’s car pulled-up in front of a square old house with gothic shaped windows. It was set behind a walled garden and access was through a full-length door like a postern cut in the wall. The doctor ran his car through a gate at the side of the house and down to what appeared to be stables at the back.
“Park yours in the road, Knell. I’ll be with you in a minute.”
As they made their way along the gravel path down the hidden garden to the front door, there was a heavy scent of wallflowers on the air, bees buzzed among the espaliers which flowered on the walls, and tulips were already blooming to replace the dying daffodils. In this secret sheltered spot, everything seemed weeks ahead of elsewhere.
The doctor led them through a cool dark little hall into a study to the right, which overlooked the garden. Excusing himself, he left them and could be heard talking with a woman in the back quarters, apparently ordering a meal. He was soon back.
The room was small and cosy. A large fireplace in which burned a huge log. Saddleback armchairs, a small sideboard, books in shelves along one wall and in alcoves on each side of the fire. A double-barrelled sporting gun in one corner along with fishing-tackle. Framed photographs of university groups and Rugby teams.
“The river runs just behind,” said the doctor, intercepting Littlejohn’s glance at the rods. “We get some fine salmon at times, and always trout in season. Look.”
He led them to the window and showed them the direction in which the river lay and then indicated a large house to the west.
“That is Ellanbane, which means White Island. Long ago, it stood in a wilderness of bog which stretched from here to Ballaugh and embraced Myrescogh and Mylecharaine. Ellanbane was for long the home of the Standish family, which included Longfellow’s Pilgrim Father, Miles.”
“Beer or whisky?”
A small slim woman of sixty or more put in her head and raised her eyebrows in a cheerful question.
“Both, Nessie, please.”
They all sat by the fire, for, in spite of the warm sun outside, there was a chill dampness in the room akin to that at Myrescogh, which may have arisen from the hidden waters which probably undermine the whole stretch of flat land bordering the curraghs.
There were no signs whatever of the practice of medicine in the room, which was obviously the den which the doctor usually occupied. Pakeman apparently read Littlejohn’s thoughts.
“I’ve half retired from medicine. I used to live in Ramsey when I was very active, but now I’ve only kept on the country part of my work. It’s a long stretch from the curraghs to Ramsey to see the doctor, and as often as not, I visit my patients at home, except in mild cases where they can walk a mile or two and then get the bus. I love the quiet of the marshlands and I go there most days, even if nobody’s sick.”
“You must know all that goes on there, then.”
“Some of it. As I said, they’re secret folk and only tell you what they want you to know. The women will gossip, of course, and once you’ve won the confidence of the men, they’ll confide in you. Great talkers if you get them going. A li’l cooish, they call it. A little chat about everything. There’s not much in the curraghs but work and talk. At night, they gather round the fires before bedtime and chatter. If they couldn’t talk, they’d be eaten up by boredom. Many of them have cars, but they use them merely for church or the mart, or perhaps a visit to nearby neighbours. In winter, the fury of the weather, storms sweeping across the flatlands, isolates them. And in summer, they’re busy on the land. It’s then that the marshes steam and the earth dries, and in the hot sunshine the villages and farms seem to sleep among the reeds in the heat like exhausted animals.”
Nessie had brought in the lunch, a tray bearing two plates piled with sandwiches, glasses and bottles, and a large apple pie in a dish on top of a small pile of plates. She whispered to the doctor.
“Excuse me. A patient for some medicine, they enter by a wicket gate at the side which leads into a sort of conservatory I use as a waiting-room, when there’s anybody to wait. Thence a door admits them to the surgery.”
He went out leaving the servant to spread the meal on a series of little tables which she set beside the three chairs.
“You live here, Mrs?”
“Mrs. Vondy’s the name, sir. Yes, I live in. I’ve been with the docthor since himself, my husband, died three years since. I like it. Mrs. Joughin, before me, was here about ten years. It’s a good place to be at and the docthor that nice, too. Mrs. Joughin would have still been here, leek as not, if her brother in Australia hadn’t died an’ left ’er twenty thousand pounds.”
This was obviously Mrs. Vondy’s great news which she passed on to everybody. The awful way in which she said twenty thousand was proof of that.
“So she retired?”
“Went to live at Maughold, the other side 0’ Ramsey.
The village where she was born and where she says she wants to die and be buried in the old churchyard there.”
The doctor was back.
Beer and sandwiches circulated and the doctor talked as they ate.
“What was I saying? Giving you some background about the curraghs, wasn’t I? Delightful people, but best at home in their own farms and villages. Like those lovely local wines of France which are ruined by removing them from their native places.”
Where was it all leading to? Littlejohn couldn’t even guess. Did it concern Skollick and the crime, or was it just a li’l cooish which the people so loved in the off hours on the marsh?
At any rate, it was pleasant, sitting there, eating excellent beef sandwiches and drinking good Castletown ale, with the view of the garden and, beyond it, the magnificent chestnut trees of the road and the green rising slopes beyond them.
“What is the name of this place, sir?”
Knell thought he’d better say something between his bites at a large sandwich.
“Tantaloo, Knell. We’re in Lezayre parish, and the view at the end of the little valley opposite gives the house its name. Tantaloo. There used to be a little hamlet there and a small tuck-mill, as the Manx call the old fulling-works.”
It was very comfortable and the doctor had opened the front window which let in the scent of the flowers. A flock of pigeons swept regularly round and round over the garden.
“That’s where Skollick made his mistake.” Now it was coming!
“He didn’t try to understand people before he started to deal with them. When he arrived at Myrescogh, he was a comeover, a stranger, an interloper. One has to lie low until one gains the confidence and respect of one’s neighbours anywhere, most of all in the curraghs. But Skollick was so selfish and avaricious, he wanted to do everything at once.”
The doctor rose and poured out more beer for his guests.
He took a good drink himself.
“He seemed to have a mania for acquiring land. He wanted to build up a vast estate at Myrescogh for some reason, probably out of pride and to show-off. Making himself a big landowner. As I told you before, he met with stubborn refusals from the owners to sell even a yard. So he began his peevish tricks. Firing the gorse and old rubbish to annoy his neighbours. And he had a habit of digging out old cattle roads and tracks, long overgrown, and some of them embraced in other people’s farms. He’d ride over them on his horse and if the farmer objected, point out the track and challenge him to go to law. One or two tried it out and had their fun but had to pay for it.”
Pakeman rose again, cut substantial wedges of apple tart, and poured rich thick cream over them; then he handed them out with a spoon apiece.
“A man will, you know, go to extremes of violence for his land or his women. To suffer injustice is a normal human burden and is often borne with patienc
e. But when it comes to land and women. It creates madness of intoxication which breeds unpredictable passions and evil. Now you see what I’m getting at. Skollick might have been killed by almost anybody in the curraghs.”
Knell stopped eating and seemed to be brooding on some point or other. Then, he began to chew his pie again as though he’d reached a decision.
“Do you think that Mr. Lee is protecting someone, then, doctor?”
“What do you mean, Knell?”
“Perhaps he saw the crime committed and won’t say who did it.”
“I’m sure you’re right. Lee wouldn’t hurt a fly. Unless.”
“Perhaps he knew someone or other would use violence to Skollick one day and decided to avert it by taking the sin of murder on his own shoulders. I remember once when I met him in the curraghs there’d just been a haystack fire and he suggested it might be one of Sir Martin’s tricks. He worked himself into quite a frenzy of sympathy for Skollick’s victims. You see, like Anatole France’s Putois, Sir Martin was the scapegoat for every wrong in the district. A girl in the family way…Sir Martin. A cow dies. Sir Martin. A house on fire … Sir Martin. The best silver spoons missing. Sir Martin. It was ridiculous. He had become the modern edition of what the old Manx used to call the Eye, the putting of a curse on one’s enemies.”
Littlejohn drank the last of his beer. “More beer, Littlejohn?”
“Thanks, doctor. It’s a funny thing, I’ve no idea of what Skollick looked like. Strangely enough, I’ve made up in my mind a picture of him so vivid that I’ve not even asked to see a photograph of him.”
Littlejohn could have sketched his own mental photograph of Skollick. It was something like his late friend Tad Slaughter taking his famous part of William Corder in Maria Martin, or the Murder in the Red Barn. Riding clothes, hunting crop, swagger, lecherous smile.
Pakeman was handing him a photograph apparently taken by a newspaper man. A little group of people obviously at an agricultural show standing with a fine horse, a hunter, on the bridle of which was a rosette indicating a prize winner. On one side of the animal were Pakeman and the woman whose picture was repeated so often in the morning room at Myrescogh Manor. She was still handsome in a dark mature aquiline way, with high cheek-bones, a fine arched nose, pointed chin and large eyes. Her greying hair curled attractively from beneath her little hat. She was smiling at the horse in a fond, melancholy way.
Littlejohn was looking for the villain, Sir Martin, the scoundrel who coveted his neighbour’s land and women and who had ruined hundreds through his financial bucket-shop and gone to gaol for doing it.
“Is this him?” said Littlejohn, ungrammatical in his astonishment.
“Yes.”
On the other side of the horse, looking away from it possibly at a passing woman-was a small, bareheaded, thin man in tweeds. A caricature of a villain! He was turning bald and had the bandy-legged stance of a cavalryman. He wore a small moustache and had a firm mouth and jaw. The features could have been described as large and strong, the kind which should have gone with six feet or more, instead of with five-feet six. He appeared to be smaller than his wife, but the deep-set eyes and the self-confident smile made you think of a wasp buzzing round a butterfly. However small Skollick might have been, he had a sting hidden somewhere about him.
“Funny. I never thought of Skollick being so small.”
“Many people misjudged him, to their regret. Casement, the poacher, for example. Skollick once caught him on his land and struck him with his crop. Casement, an enormous fellow, who loves poaching and would die without it, was flabbergasted. He hit Skollick back; just, as he said later, to teach him not to be so handy with his whip. There was nobody about to prove a case. Skollick told one tale and Casement another. It never went to court, but Skollick took his revenge. He insisted on police assistance against poaching and he and the police so harried and chased poor Casement about, that he became a dangerous savage. The type who might have shot Skollick himself in the end.”
“So we have yet another suspect?”
“Yes; but no greater than the rest. Sir Martin was universally disliked.”
“You mentioned his wife’s continued affection for him.
Was he kind to her in spite of being unfaithful?”
“When he was sober, yes. When he was drunk, he was a devil. He taunted and accused her, made fun of her interest in the village life and especially in the village church. On one or two occasions, he struck her.”
“Did she tell you this, doctor?”
“No. Jinnie, who seems to think the world of me, has kept me informed. In fact, she once called here. Sir Martin had had a mild attack of D.T.’s. Jinnie came to ask if it wouldn’t be possible for me to do something, certify him as insane or an inebriate fit for a home. People always rush to the doctor with such troubles.”
“And yet, Lady Skollick stood by him through it all.”
“Yes. She is a good religious woman and said she knew where her duty lay. I noticed her bruised arm once when I called and asked her outright if her husband had done it, in view of what Jinnie had told me.”
Littlejohn looked at the rugged, troubled face and sad eyes of the doctor, sad even when he was smiling, and wondered how many more secrets he knew about Myrescogh Manor and the curraghs and people which surrounded it.
The maid was back and whispering to the doctor again.
Another patient.
“We’re busy to-day.”
Pakeman excused himself and left. They could hear a door open and close along the passage.
“What do you think of it all, Knell?”
“The doctor seems to know plenty. He’s a lonely man, isn’t he, sir? And he’s glad to find a sympathetic friend and get a lot of it off his chest.”
“You’re right. I wonder what his own history is. What’s made him come over here and shut himself up in this place and seek the loneliest community on the island to serve? I’d like to find out.”
“What about calling at Maughold and having a word with his old servant. The one Mrs. Vondy mentioned, sir?”
“Not a bad idea. We’ll talk about it on the way back.”
“We pass the Maughold turning.”
Littlejohn stood by the window, smoking his pipe and admiring the garden. In one corner, he noticed a radiogram with a pile of records under it. Casually he raised the lid. There was a disc on the turntable. He slipped on his spectacles and leaned to read the title out of curiosity about the doctor’s taste. “April, by Tosti, sung by Jean Calloway.” The top two of the pile beneath were hers as well. Footsteps were approaching, so he closed the lid quietly and was smoking by the window again when the doctor entered.
“I’ll have to leave you, Littlejohn. A child at the Garey choking with croup. Come again any time for another talk. By the way, you seemed surprised at Skollick. Had you imagined him as very different?”
“To tell the truth, doctor, I’d rather stupidly created a picture in my mind of somebody like William Corder in the Murder in the Red Barn!”
Pakeman nodded and smiled his sad smile.
“Sorry to disappoint you, Littlejohn, but you may be half right-you know. It may be the murder in the red barn. If he took the shortest way home to Myrescogh, Skollick would pass the Red Haggart. Haggart’s Manx for stackyard. It lies close to Red Island-Rozelean in the old Gaelic -and it’s a most likely place for an ambush. Well, I must be going.”
He saw them out and then went off to the child who was said to be dying from croup, but who survived unhurt after swallowing a safety-pin and six ball-bearings.
5
A WOMAN ON EDGE
THEY DROVE STRAIGHT back to Douglas. No sense in calling at Maughold to speak with Mrs. Joughin, Pakeman’s old servant. The arrival of a couple of total strangers asking her to tell them all she knew about the doctor would be enough to make her shut-up for ever. The Archdeacon was the man for such a job.
They picked up the parson in Douglas. He had had another
long talk with the Rev. Sullivan Lee. He’d even ordered a special lunch for the pair of them and eaten it with Lee in the gaol. But he had got no nearer; Lee would say nothing about the events on the night of the crime.
“He’s as stubborn as a mule. He’s quite set for standing trial for murder.”
So there they were. Not a bit nearer for all the day’s efforts. There were one or two matters to set in motion, though. Knell arranged with the police to go to the Red Haggart in the curraghs and give the whole place a thorough examination for traces of blood or intrusion. Pakeman’s guess might prove right.
Then, Littlejohn telephoned to Scotland Yard and asked for as much information as they could quickly gather about Sir Martin Skollick and the Rev. Sullivan Lee.
On the way back to Grenaby, Littlejohn was very thoughtful. He was trying to arrange the pieces of the curragh jigsaw in his mind and his companions maintained a sympathetic silence. Only once did Knell speak. They were passing over the Fairy Bridge at Ballalona.
“Good afternoon, little people.” he said and raised his hat, and Littlejohn and the Archdeacon solemnly followed suit. Knell was always ready for a bit of help from the fairies on any case that concerned him.
They ate a meal at the vicarage at Grenaby and then settled down over their pipes to discuss the case.
“Do you think Lee is guilty of the crime, parson, after your further long talk with him?”
“No. But I’m sure that Lee, for some reason, thinks himself guilty. I can’t say whether or not he blames himself morally or physically.”
“His refusal to speak, his effort to get off the Island, and the fact that he had a key to the school where the gun was lying overnight, are the main props of the prosecution side. There is one big point for the defence, however. The abandoned car.”
“You mean leaving it at Lezayre, sir?”
Toll the Bell for Murder (An Inspector Littlejohn Mystery) Page 5