Groaning Spinney

by Gladys Mitchell

  She came in a Hillman and the police in a Morris, and the two cars ground up Jonathan’s wet and muddy drive with Sally in the lead and the police about thirty yards behind.

  ‘Good Lord!’ said Jonathan, who knew Sally very well and had once thought of asking her to marry him. ‘Don’t say you’re going to be pinched on my very doorstep! Don’t you know that I’m a Justice of the Peace?’

  ‘I do know,’ said Sally. ‘I’ve been terrified. They began to follow me just as I turned out of Cirencester, and they’ve been tagging along ever since. I thought at first it must be accidental, but when they came into the village behind me and then turned up this drive …’

  ‘I beg pardon, sir,’ said a very smart sergeant of the Gloucestershire constabulary, ‘but might I have a word?’

  ‘Certainly. Come in here. Deb, look after Sally. You do know one another slightly and you both know me a lot, so …’

  ‘I’m sorry to intrude, sir, on top of visitors,’ said the sergeant. ‘Well, yes, I will, sir, if it’s all the same. Many thanks.’

  Jonathan poured out a couple of beers, asked the maid to find Mrs. Bradley, and produced a pipe for himself and cigarettes for the Law.

  ‘Stop me if I’m wrong,’ he said, when Mrs. Bradley had been found, and the sergeant had taken a long, refreshing draught and had lighted a cigarette, ‘but I take it that you’ve come about those wretched anonymous letters that some of us have been receiving.’

  ‘In a sort of a way, yes, sir. A Mr. Baird, down in the village, has complained, and, previous to that, we heard from a Mrs. Dalby Whittier, who was housekeeper to the two Mr. Fullaloves.’

  ‘Oh? What did Mrs. Whittier have to say?’

  ‘Something which got us rather… shall I say interested, sir? The fact is—you’ll please to keep this to yourself, sir—she gave us a piece of news which made us look twice at Mr. Bill Fullalove’s death. Of course, the inquest went straightforward enough, and the doctors both gave the only evidence they could give, medically speaking, which, as you remember, was heart failure due to cold and exposure. Anyway, sir, when this letter from Mrs. Dalby Whittier turned up, we naturally took steps to verify her information.’

  ‘I thought you always proceeded,’ said Jonathan.

  ‘Beg pardon, sir?’

  ‘Oh, nothing. Sorry. Have some more beer.’

  ‘Well, thank you, I don’t mind if I do. Well, sir—lovely drop of stuff, this. I always say you can’t beat the West Country for beers—it turns out that Mrs. Dalby Whittier’s yarn is true. No longer ago than last September, Mr. Bill Fullalove got himself medically examined for a life insurance policy. It seems he thought to get married at some time or other. Now comes the interesting part, sir. Mr. Tiny, according to the doctor what has been attending him in that nursing home he’s gone to, is no great shakes as a life. Not terrible bad, you know, but long years in India haven’t done his constitution much good. Mr. Bill, on the other hand, was a remarkably good life. The insurance company’s doctor—we’ve been in personal touch with him—states he has never seen a healthier man or tested a heart in better condition than when he examined Mr. William Fullalove, address as we all know it.’

  ‘Oho!’ said Jonathan, obviously and greatly interested.

  ‘In view of which,’ pursued the sergeant, ‘although against the grain in a local matter, we are applying to the Chief Constable to see what he thinks about asking for an exhumation order. It’s really our own surgeon’s wish, sir, him not liking the idea that he made a wrong diagnosis. He says he’s sure there was nothing overlooked at the post-mortem, and he’s got his professional pride.’

  ‘Well, that should settle matters, one way or another. By the way, now that Bill has gone, how does his will work out?’

  ‘That’s the curious part, sir. Got the lawyers tied up properly. There’s no question of the insurance people not paying up. The verdict was clear, and they can’t go again’ it and don’t intend to. The amount is five thousand pounds. Now, that’s not a big insurance, as such things go, but it might tempt some people. Well, the funny thing is that we don’t know who it might have tempted … that is, if the death wasn’t quite all it appeared to be. The will is made out in favour of——’ he took a notebook out and passed a formidable young thumb over its pages—’my dear wife Amabel Lucinda.’

  ‘No other clue to the lady’s identity?’

  ‘None at all, sir. And Mr. Tiny swears he wasn’t married. It all adds up a bit odd, sir.’

  ‘So that, unless the lady comes forward and stakes her claim, Tiny, I suppose, gets the lot—the money Bill left and all the insurance, too.’

  ‘That’s the size of it, sir. Been very short with the lawyers, Mr. Tiny has, and you can’t hardly blame him, really. Challenged them to produce a marriage certificate and said that whoever Mr. Bill might have intended to make his wife, he was absolutely certain he’d never actually married.’

  ‘Unless, for some reason, he kept the marriage secret. Still, no doubt that if she exists the lady will come forward, marriage lines and all, as soon as she hears of the death.’

  ‘Yes, very likely, sir. Perhaps I should give the name of the beneficiary we’ve got in our mind, sir …’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Mrs. Dalby Whittier, sir.’

  ‘But, good Lord, she was just the housekeeper and not a young woman, at that!’

  ‘Hot stuff, sir, I wouldn’t be surprised,’ said the sergeant. ‘Little and good, you know. Good for what, says you? Perhaps good for nothing, says I! Thank you very much, sir. I really don’t mind if I do. Yes, sir, there it is. He might have married her secretly, as you say. It don’t take long, with a registrar and a special licence. Although why he should want it secret, an independent gentleman like him——!’

  ‘So you rather want to see Mrs. Dalby Whittier, I take it?’

  ‘Well, there’s the five thousand pounds, sir. It’s a lot of money to anyone in Mrs. Dalby Whittier’s position. The only thing is——’

  ‘Yes, what?’ But Jonathan had an inkling of what was coming.

  ‘We can’t trace her, sir. After she left the bungalow she was supposed to go to her relations in London. She never turned up. Not that they seem to have troubled themselves about that. Just said they thought she’d changed her mind and have been waiting for a letter to that effect. Seems it was years since they’d seen her, and we gathered they wouldn’t lose sleep if they never saw her again. Hinted as how she had been a little bit of a bad ’un. Blotted the family copy book, we were given to understand, and had been more or less kicked out when she eventually got married. What do you think about that, sir?’

  ‘You’d better ask my aunt,’ said Jonathan.

  ‘So that, if she did marry Mr. Bill Fullalove, it would have been her second marriage?’ Mrs. Bradley enquired.

  ‘That’s the size of it, ma’am.’

  ‘Did she have any children by her first husband?’

  ‘Yes, one child. A boy. The choirmaster here—Mr. Emming. That doesn’t surprise you, ma’am?’

  ‘Not in the least. I had guessed it. I wonder whether she left a will?’

  ‘If she’s really disappeared we’ll have to trace her, particular as there’s going to be an enquiry into these here anonymous letters.’

  ‘And if there is going to be another enquiry into Bill Fullalove’s death,’ said Jonathan. ‘By the way, what was the post-mark on this letter she sent you?’

  ‘London, W.i, sir. And her relations live in Lewisham.’

  ‘Still, it means she did go to London.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Was her letter written by hand?’ Mrs. Bradley enquired.

  ‘No. In a sort of careful print done in pencil, ma’am, and just signed D. D. Whittier.’

  ‘So it may not have come from her, you mean?’

  ‘Well, I must say we took it that it did, ma’am. No reason to doubt it, I should say.’

  ‘So there it is,’ said the Chief Constable. ‘We can
find Mrs. Whittier, of course, but, short of exhuming the body, there’s nothing more we can do, and in spite of what the inspector and his police surgeon say, I’m dead against it.’

  ‘You can track down this anonymous letter-writer, anyway, can’t you?’ demanded Jonathan.

  ‘It isn’t easy, you know.’

  ‘But, hang it all, the person, whoever it is, and my bet is that it’s a woman, is somebody living in this village! What’s more, it’s somebody who has access to a typewriter. All the letters I’ve seen have been typewritten, except the one which came first to me. Yes, and that reminds me! There was the very odd business of that typed note pushed under Anstey’s door. We’ve never found out who did that.’

  ‘There’s nobody in the village with a typewriter. That brings us up all standing. Two of the blue-stocking ma’ams at the College have got one, but I can’t get at even the smell of a typewriter here, and when we tested the College ones they proved to be out of the question. The doctor writes everything by hand, and so does the vicar. There isn’t even one at the post-office. You haven’t got one, have you?’

  ‘Yes, of course I have, but the type is quite different from that used for the letters. You’re welcome to test it for yourself. In fact, I wish you would. The point is, not that there isn’t a typewriter, but that you haven’t found it. Moreover, whoever types or writes the letters goes into Cheltenham to post them. All have a Cheltenham postmark. Isn’t that anything to go on?’

  ‘Half the village goes into Cheltenham at least once a week. Some go oftener. You can’t get anything from that. They go there for shopping and the pictures,’ said the Chief Constable, shaking his head.

  ‘In other words, you’re hedging. You don’t want to ask for an exhumation, but you’re afraid you’ll have to. That’s about the size of it, isn’t it? I can’t see what you’re waiting for! If the poor bloke was murdered you’ve got to investigate, and if he wasn’t an exhumation will stop this scandalmonger’s tongue. There’s nothing to lose! For goodness’ sake get on with your job and stop stalling!’

  ‘It’s no good your turning nasty, my boy,’ said the Chief Constable, kindly. ‘I know what’s the matter with you. You’ve got your own reasons for wanting this poison pen tracked down and exposed, and I quite understand your point of view. But this person is just some lunatic trying for a bit of notoriety, that’s all. My reaction is to leave the whole thing to die down. What this letter-writer wants is a bit of excitement. If we fail to provide it, he or she will give up trying. It’s not as though the letters were of really virulent type. I mean, nobody’s going to commit suicide because of these letters. No, what this condemned scribe wants is to have us do just exactly what I for one am not prepared to do—exhume Bill Fullalove’s body and have newspaper headlines about it, and, in the end, make ourselves a laughing stock. That would be meat and drink to this sort of reptile.’

  ‘You’re prepared, then, to disregard the opinions of your own policemen?’

  ‘Look here,’ said the Chief Constable patiently, ‘your own Dr. Fielding and the local police surgeon gave perfectly clear evidence at the inquest. Plenty of people die of cold and exposure. If those two doctors are going to turn cranky enough to deny their own sworn statements, they’re asking for trouble, that’s all. As for the insurance bloke, he must have made a mistake. I suppose even doctors can be deceived. He may have thought that Bill was a good life, but the fact remains that the poor chap wasn’t, that’s all.’

  ‘Doctors can be deceived, eh? There you are, you see! And your own police bloke is ready to admit that he might have been deceived, and yet you refuse to act! Well, whether Fullalove died naturally or not is no actual business of mine, but this poison pen is everybody’s business, and I give you my word that if any more anonymous letters are written, I’ll track down the writer myself, and I shall make no bones about what I say to the police if I do. As for the exhumation, I don’t care whether you have that or not, because if there was anything wrong about the death it’ll be your affair, not mine, as I say. But I know there was something wrong!’

  ‘Hang it, man, what have we got to go on? I can’t just back up an unsubstantiated opinion.’

  ‘There’s Mrs. Dalby Whittier’s disappearance.’

  ‘We can tackle that, of course, but as for the other matter—this exhumation—well, if Mrs. Bradley, whose opinion, needless to say, I respect, can give me a definite pointer …’

  ‘Suppose another letter—Oh, well, never mind.’

  ‘Suppose another letter named names and made another definite accusation against somebody? I don’t know, at the moment, what I should do about that. There would have to be some sort of evidence. The letters, so far, contain no real facts at all.’

  ‘But they do, you know! All of them! Every one! Oh, well, let’s forget it,’ said Jonathan, ‘but remember that you’ll be responsible as soon as something blows up!’

  But no one was permitted to forget it. The next complaint that an anonymous letter had been received came again from the nursing home where Tiny Fullalove was mending his damaged knee.

  ‘It’s quite absurd,’ he pointed out, ‘but some damn’ feller has written accusing me of doing in poor old Bill. What do I do about it?’

  ‘Nothing, apparently,’ said Jonathan. ‘That’s the Chief Constable’s view, at any rate. You grin and bear it, that’s all.’

  ‘But can’t you do anything? Damn it, you’re a Justice of the Peace.’

  ‘Yes. That has its humorous aspect,’ replied Jonathan, still angry with Fullalove over Deborah. ‘You’d better ring up the police and leave it to them.’

  The Chief Constable visited Jonathan again the next day.

  ‘Here’s our next definite accusation all right,’ he said triumphantly, ‘and it only bears out what I said. This individual is so anxious to get herself into the papers that she hasn’t even taken the trouble to find out that, even supposing the death wasn’t natural, Tiny Fullalove is the one person who couldn’t have had anything to do with it.’

  ‘His busted knee-cap?’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘We’ve no clue to when he did it, have we?’

  ‘Yes, near enough, I think. Anstey met you at about a quarter past four. Bill was not dead when you went up through Groaning Spinney. You found his body propped against the gate on your return journey.’

  ‘So what?’

  ‘So Tiny had got his injury before Bill died.’

  ‘Tiny could have delivered the note himself, and then gone off and killed Bill. We don’t know when that note was pushed under Anstey’s door.’

  ‘But how could he know he was going to be injured like that? The injury is his alibi.’

  ‘Some blokes in the Army …’

  ‘Yes, I know. But—do you think Tiny’s that type?—And a smashed knee-cap is so damnably painful that it’s not the kind of injury to be deliberately self-inflicted.

  ‘I don’t know what I think about that, but it was all a bit odd about that note. There’s something that doesn’t make sense. And I suppose you haven’t found Mrs. Whittier yet?’

  ‘Look here,’ said the Chief Constable, ‘I’ll tell you what. You set to work quietly and track down this village pest and we’ll force her into the open with her proofs. You don’t want a lot of policemen nosey-parkering their way round the place. Our bird would soon smell a rat, and might go to earth.’

  Mrs. Bradley, who was privileged to overhear this startling metaphor, cackled with deep appreciation.

  ‘Ah, yes,’ said the Chief Constable. ‘The very person! What has morbid psychology to say about this anonymous scandalmonger, Mrs. B.?’

  ‘Plenty,’ Mrs. Bradley replied. ‘It is a pity that you can’t issue a general search-warrant so that you could find that typewriter. There are several significant features which, put together, could only belong to one individual machine, and that machine, I may add, is not the one in this house.’

  ‘Yes, but we’ve no power to issue such a
warrant. Besides, I don’t want those kind of practical suggestions from you. I want to know what’s behind these letters. What makes people sit down and write ’em? … apart from the general human desire to see what happens when you start a bit of muck-raking, I mean, or touch off a bomb.’

  ‘Often the letter-writer is airing a grievance against society. Sometimes he is externalizing a personal hatred or jealousy. Often he is a person with too much time on his hands. Sometimes …’

  ‘But in this case?’

  ‘In this case I have the definite impression that a crime lies behind all this. We may be looking for a murderer, and therefore the anonymous letter-writer …’

  ‘You really believe that? … That Fullalove was murdered? Well, look here, then! If I get a shred of real evidence that anything fishy (apart from the letters, of course) is going on, I’ll apply for an exhumation order.’

  ‘Is that a promise?’ demanded Jonathan.

  ‘Yes, it is,’ said the Chief Constable, after a moment’s thought. Mrs. Bradley cackled.

  ‘You won’t need to keep it, child,’ she said.

  ‘Why not?’ asked the Chief Constable, studying her expression and changing his own to one of anxiety.

  ‘Because there is no question of shreds of evidence. You’ll find that your hand will be forced. You will have to get that body exhumed and examined.’

  ‘And why?’

  ‘Because I am quite sure that whether anybody knows anything definite about the manner of Mr. Bill Fullalove’s death, there is something criminal connected with Mrs. Dalby Whittier’s disappearance.’

  ‘Well, Scotland Yard have taken that over. Her letter to us, as you know, was posted in London. The point is—is Tiny Fullalove involved?’

  ‘I’m almost certain of it… Oh, I don’t mean that Tiny murdered Bill. He may have done, of course. But I firmly believe that there is something very strange about that five thousand pounds’ insurance money. Consider the facts. A man with an excellent constitution gets his life insured for what is, to one in his position, a considerable sum of money. The same man dies of cold and exposure. His will leaves his property to a so-far unidentifiable wife. His cousin, with whom he lives and who might be expected to have knowledge of his affairs, declares that there is no wife. If this can be proved, the money all comes to the said cousin, as next of kin.’