Toll the Bell for Murder (An Inspector Littlejohn Mystery)

by George Bellairs

  “Did you and Dr. McWinnie perform the autopsy, sir?”

  “I did it with his help. I’m the medico-legal expert for the Island and as it was murder the case was turned over to me.”

  “Dr. Pakeman was first on the scene, then?”

  “Yes. He heard the shot at two o’clock.”

  “And emphasized the experience?”

  “He told us the full story of the night’s events, although I don’t see how that affects the finding of the criminal. Is that all you wish to know?”

  The Archdeacon and Knell seemed surprised at Littlejohn’s long absence.

  “Been having an argument, Littlejohn?”

  “Not really, but death might have occurred before two in the morning.”

  “But that’s the time the shot was fired.”

  “Yes, sir. And I think the time has now come for us to have another word with Mr. Sullivan Lee. Shall we call on our way back?”

  “Yes. One other matter about my interview with Mrs. Joughin. I forgot to say that she described Dr. Pakeman as morose. Did you find him so?”

  “Not at all. He was full of good humour and hospitality, as Knell will agree.”

  Knell removed his pipe and nodded sagely. Littlejohn drank the last of his cold coffee.

  “The death of Skollick made a new man of him,” he said.

  9

  THE FOLLY OF SULLIVAN LEE

  “IT’S A BEAUTY. A genuine antique, but a beauty.”

  Littlejohn laid down the gun on the table of Knell’s office and patted the stock appreciatively.

  Almost a century old, it was the work of a London gunsmith whose firm was still in the trade. The barrels, worn thin by long use, were beautifully chased, the balance of the weapon was perfect, and it seemed to rise to the shoulder automatically, as though it had life in it.

  “There were only Sullivan Lee’s prints on it, you say.

  That’s a bit strange isn’t it, seeing that it was handled by the women at the school?”

  “I enquired about that, sir. It seems the women gave it a good polishing-up before they left it. Not that it would make it sell for more. But you know what some women are, sir. Miss Caley, who did the job, said the wood of the stock was so lovely, she couldn’t help giving it a good rubbing.”

  “She was right, Knell. A fine piece of timber, indeed.” Littlejohn drew back the hammers of the gun and opened the breach by means of the bolt which lay under the trigger guard; there was no spring action. He squinted along the insides of the barrels. They were in the state in which the police had found them, and fouled by smoke and powder. The half-empty box of pin-fire cartridges was on the table beside the gun. Littlejohn took two of them and tried them in the breach. They slid easily in and out, the pins held in position beneath the hammers by sockets in the barrels. The gun was now at half-cock, in a safety position, for the triggers could not be pulled until the hammers were put at full-cock.

  “This old-fashioned pin-fire idea is a bit complicated. I’m sure Lee didn’t know how to manipulate the gun properly. It’s a wonder he didn’t blow himself up. Is Miss Caley on the telephone?”

  They looked her up in the directory. She was there. “Superintendent Littlejohn, Miss Caley.”

  There was a gasp, and over the instrument Littlejohn could almost hear the palpitation of her heart, like using a stethoscope instead of a telephone. Finally, she managed to speak in a hushed voice.

  “Yes. I’m so very glad to meet you. We are very grateful to you for your help. all the trouble.”

  “I hear you had charge of the shot-gun which was for sale at the jumble.”

  “Oh, dear.”

  She sounded to be sniffing smelling-salts.

  “Oh, dear. I really didn’t.”

  “Please don’t distress yourself, Miss Caley. I simply wish to ask if you and Mr. Lee examined the gun on the night you arranged the things for the sale.”

  “Oh, yes. Mr. Lee did. You see, he had some doubts about whether we were justified in offering it for sale. It was so old, that he said it might be out of order. However, he opened and closed it and seemed satisfied. It took him a long time. He said he hadn’t handled a gun since he was a boy, when his grandfather used to take him out shooting and he used to place his fingers over his ears and fall many paces back behind his grandparent when he thought a shot was going to be fired and...”

  “He managed to open and close it all right?”

  “Yes. He commented on the beauty of the workmanship, saying that our forefathers worked most lovingly on.”

  “Did he load it?”

  “Dear me, no. But he explained, or tried to explain to me the mechanism for loading it. He spent some time on finding out how it worked. You see, he thought at first, when he tried to set it off.”

  “Fire it?”

  “I beg your pardon.”

  “Sorry I interrupted. You were saying, Miss Caley?”

  “When he tried to set it off, it would not function. Then he discovered how to make it do so and seemed very pleased, because had it not worked it would not have been right to sell it except as defective, he said. I’m afraid I wasn’t very interested. In fact, I was terrified of the thing, but I thought that as it was in the hands of a good practical man, no ill would befall me.”

  “Thank you, Miss Caley. Your information is of great help.”

  “I’m afraid I can’t see how.”

  “It will probably prove that Mr. Lee is innocent.”

  “Oh.”

  He bade her good-bye and left her to recover and think it out. Then, he took one of the cartridges, gingerly cut the cardboard case, and shook the contents out on a newspaper. Knell and the Archdeacon watched him inquisitively.

  “Why! It’s black powder. The old gunpowder they used when I was a lad, Littlejohn.”

  “That’s right, sir. This type of gun belongs to those days. Let’s ring up Dr. Rees Whatmore again, shall we?”

  The doctor was still at home. Most convenient for the police; what his patients thought was another matter.

  “You again, Littlejohn! What’s wrong now?”

  He sounded tetchy this time. He had been engaged in a long post-mortem and was relaxing and enjoying a detective story over a late meal. It was irritating being brought back to realities.

  “I just wanted a word with you about the wound in Skollick’s head.”

  They’d shown Littlejohn the photographs of the body and they hadn’t been a pretty sight!

  “The wound! It was like a combination of all the wounds I’ve ever seen. What about it?”

  “You say in your report that it was made at short range.”

  “Yes. Any reason for doubting it?”

  “No, sir. Not at all. Was it a dirty wound?”

  “What do you mean by that? A shocking one, or a filthy one? You must remember that one side of the head and the face had been shot away. Whoever did it must have let him have it good and proper.”

  “Was it blackened?”

  “Scorched, you mean? Not much. The murderer stood too far away to do much of that.”

  “I’ll put it plainly, doctor. Was there any trace of black powder about? The cartridges in the gun fired by Lee were loaded with old black gunpowder.”

  “Good God! I made no comment in my report. The gun was there with the body and Lee was there as good as saying he’d done it. The load was of 5 shots according to the figures on the cartridges and I extracted 5 shots from the head. I made no examination of the powder, but there were no black or sooty traces there.”

  “One wouldn’t normally expect you to do so, doctor.

  This has proved to be a most unusual case. Thank you for your ready help. That’s all I want to know.”

  He turned from the telephone to the Archdeacon.

  “That lets out the Reverend Sullivan Lee. Skollick wasn’t killed by this gun.”

  “Thank God! Let’s go right away and tell him so.”

  “I wonder if it will do him much good. W
e can try, however. The old-fashioned gunpowder would have left traces in the wound. Even if it was only carried on the shots and the wads. Skollick was probably killed by cartridges loaded with smokeless powder.”

  All was still peaceful in prison. The warder was reading his paper again, sprang to attention, and put his hat on. Littlejohn observed that murder had taken second place in the news.

  CURATE, 56, ELOPES WITH CHOIR GIRL OF 17.

  Police have Clue in Curragh Murder.

  The Rev. Sullivan Lee was quietly reading his book on Manx Worthies, a cup of tea at his elbow, a beatific smile on his face.

  “It’s driven him off his chump,” whispered the warder to Knell as he turned to leave them.

  Lee rose to greet them.

  “So good of you to call again. Please sit down.” The Archdeacon went in to the attack right away.

  “You’ve been in gaol quite long enough, Lee, and it’s time you answered the questions of the police sensibly.” Lee gave him a startled look, and the old stubborn, almost mulish expression drove the smile from his face.

  “I have nothing to say, Archdeacon. I’m so sorry. Please don’t think I don’t appreciate.”

  Littlejohn lit his pipe, the fumes of which quickly dispelled the smells of disinfectant and peppermint which mingled in the cell. Mr. Lee was an addict to curiously strong peppermint lozenges and the warder had supplied large quantities of these as required.

  “If you won’t answer questions, Mr. Lee, let me tell you a story. All you need to do is listen, for the time being.”

  Lee looked puzzled, took out his peppermints, offered them round, drew a blank, and apologized for taking one himself. This he immediately disposed of by furiously crunching it.

  “On Tuesday April 13th, you were at a social evening in the Mylecharaine schoolroom preparing for a jumble sale next day. All was ready at eleven o’clock, and you and some of the ladies locked-up the school and you put the key in your pocket.”

  Lee nodded his head in agreement. He was so interested in the tale that he forgot to chew his lozenge and listened with great attention.

  “At that time, old William Fayle, of Ballagonny, was dying.”

  “Requiescat in pace,” murmured Mr. Lee.

  “You arrived back at the vicarage at half-past eleven. At just before midnight, you received a message asking you to go to the bedside of the dying man. You answered it at once by hurrying to Ballagonny, where you arrived at about midnight.”

  Mr. Lee was now looking alarmed and it was not because the truth was unfolding, but because he had been caught-up in Littlejohn’s account of the fatal night and was living it again. He saw the nightmare relentlessly approaching him. He sat still and wide-eyed as the horror paralysed him.

  “You stayed at Ballagonny over an hour and then, being of the opinion-which, by the way, was shared by the doctor-that the old man would last the night out, you left for home at one-thirty.”

  The darkness of night was gathering in the imagination of the Rev. Sullivan Lee. He could hear the wind in the trees along the roadway and, in the distance, just make out the glow of the candle in the front room of his vicarage, the candle which burned before the little shrine to his wife. He sighed deeply, a noise like a sob. He was like someone without hope, at the end of his tether.

  “You occupied yourself in prayer and getting ready for bed, sir, until about a quarter to two. Then you looked out of the window across the curragh and saw a faint light near the schoolroom.”

  Lee’s terrified jaw dropped and a bead of saliva formed and trickled over his bottom lip and down his chin.

  “You went off to explore. You thought someone was trying to break in and steal some of the goods from the schoolroom.”

  Still the vicar of Mylecharaine did not speak. He sat like one who sees death or worse approaching in a nightmare and cannot move a muscle or cry out. He saw himself walking through the mists rising from the dark marshes and heard the dogs barking as he passed the sleeping cottages.

  “You arrived at the school, but found nobody had entered. But something else scared you. It caused you to take up the gun lying there for sale, load it, and go out into the darkness. What was it, sir?”

  It was plain to see that the details, step by step, of the priest’s night of horror, were reducing him to the state of a man undergoing a third-degree and when Littlejohn’s final question, gently asked at the end of a narrative, suddenly arrived, Sullivan Lee’s answer came before he could think what he was doing.

  “The dog! The dog!”

  “What dog?”

  “The Moddey Dhoo.”

  “You mean Moddey Mooar. Casement’s dog. Did you see the dog?”

  “It was the Moddey Dhoo.” The Archdeacon intervened.

  “Several places on the Island have their spectral black dog, the Moddey Dhoo, the appearance of which is said to foretell disaster. Mylecharaine is not without its hound, either. You saw a dog, Lee?”

  “I have never believed the story. Such things do not happen. But there it was, outside the door, eyes ablaze, horrible.”

  It was the first sensible thing Lee had said for days, but he mustn’t have thought so. He wrung his hands.

  “I beg you to believe me.”

  Littlejohn turned to Knell.

  “Please telephone the Ramsey police, and ask them to bring in Casement, the poacher. I think he’s a shepherd in Druidale.”

  Knell hastened out, like someone in a trance. The story bewildered him. He wondered if Littlejohn had dreamed it all.

  “You saw the dog, and were afraid, Mr. Lee. You loaded the gun.”

  “My faith faltered. I sought something to defend me. I sinned in turning to the weapon.”

  “You went out into the dark.”

  “The dog had gone.”

  “You locked up, and went, taking the gun with you in case you encountered the dog again.”

  No answer from Lee. He had slumped in his chair, his eyes fixed unseeing ahead of him, his mouth hanging loose and open.

  “You met the dog again and shot at him.”

  “No, no. I saw no more of him. He had vanished. Such things cannot harm the righteous.”

  “But you fired the gun all the same.”

  “I stumbled. I staggered forward a few paces, trying to right myself. I must have had my fingers unconsciously wound round the triggers. The gun went off and cast me flat on my back.”

  “You picked yourself up, went ahead again and...”

  “No. I have said enough. You have made me say too much already.”

  “You went ahead again and stumbled over the body of Sir Martin Skollick lying dead by the roadside.”

  Lee covered his face with his hands, but still said no more. He was in sorry shape. His colour had drained away, leaving his features pale but lined with livid veins. Littlejohn felt compassion for him but was determined to pursue the enquiry to the finish.

  “You thought you had killed him.”

  “God forgive me! I...”

  “You picked up the body, took it and the gun to the church nearby, and prayed for forgiveness. You had no need for that. Your shots were too late, even if they had hit Sir Martin. He was dead before you appeared on the scene.”

  Lee’s hands dropped and his face suddenly grew suffused with blood. He looked ready to have a stroke. At first a ray of hope came in his eyes. Then it died out and he sagged back in his chair.

  “That is quite untrue. Nobody could have done a fellow human being to death in such a manner except through an accident like mine.”

  Littlejohn shook his head gently at Lee. It was almost a gesture of rebuke. A man who had gone through the bombing of London and seen deliberate slaughter in such a fashion must be hard-pressed or wool-gathering to make such a statement.

  “We can prove scientifically that the gun you used could not possibly have killed Skollick. And now, sir, let us be done with all this nonsense and hear a proper account of your share in the events of the early morning of
April 14th.”

  Lee was thinking hard. The shock of Littlejohn’s story had come to him like a revelation.

  “But who told you all this? You could not have been present. It is, with a few minor and irrelevant corrections, a true account of all that happened. I went to the schoolroom not because I saw a light there, but because I had left my reading-glasses behind and did not discover it until I got to Ballagonny. I had a key and a torch and went to get them. I turned and saw. I saw the...”

  “You saw Casement’s big black dog, Lee, and let us have no more nonsense about the Moddey Dhoo. It was a living poacher’s dog. Do you hear? A living dog.”

  The Archdeacon struck the table with his hand to emphasize his words. Knell crept in, nodded to Littlejohn to let him know matters were in hand, and sat down.

  “He was standing there, his jaws open, his eyes blazing, just on the edge where the light met the dark.”

  “Dogs do pant and their eyes shine when they’ve been running, Lee. For the rest, the Superintendent’s reconstruction is correct?”

  “Did you meet anybody else, hear any cars about, see any lights whilst you were abroad, sir?”

  “Ballagonny was lit-up, of course, and I could see the light of my home, the little lamp before the picture of my dear one.”

  He broke down now completely and sobbed openly, making no effort to conceal his emotion, the tears running down his cheeks, his body writhing with his grief and, perhaps his relief, too.

  “We shall take steps to have you released at once, sir, after you’ve made a statement, but there are one or two things you must clear-up first.”

  Lee looked at Littlejohn through his tears. He sat limp and exhausted by his many emotions and indicated by the mere stillness of his features that he was waiting for the next blow to fall.

  “Why didn’t you tell all this to the police?”

  “I was convinced that I had killed Skollick.”

  “But even then, it was by accident. Why didn’t you say so and be done with it, instead of acting like a murderer and getting yourself thrown in this place?”

  Lee stiffened and a stubborn look returned to his face.

  “When I stumbled over the dead body of Sir Martin Skollick and turned my torch on it, my first emotion was one of relief, almost of joy. It was momentary, of course, but I was for a brief, a very brief time, glad. The appearance did not fill me with horror. I had ministered to the injured in London during the war. I do not wish to speak ill of the dead, but Skollick was a wicked man, corrupting others by his ways. When I suddenly realized that I had felt glad, I felt, too, that in spirit, I was a murderer. I had killed him accidentally, but I had, in my heart, murdered him. I took him to church for my soul’s sake as well as his own.”