‘What’s that, then?’
‘I shan’t break my heart over it, that’s for certain. And I don’t think Miss Goodwin did, once she got over the first shock. She said she ought to have known all along that he was no damned good. Even in family matters, they’d never been able to trust him. There were money matters, you see. Something he was supposed to be looking after for Miss Goodwin’s brother until he came of age. Some sort of fiddle – I didn’t understand it, and Miss Goodwin said that she didn’t, either. I think the only ones who did were those who were in the middle of it, and one was as bad as the other, if all the truth were told. She had a terrible childhood, and that’s why she always goes about in those funny clothes.’
If Mavis had really been interested, she must surely have asked a question about the sequitur of that. But she said nothing.
‘And something I thought was pathetic: when they brought me back to the Centre, she got out of the car and danced about the hummocks as if she thought she was a kid again. Well, she came home to England, and she came to live at Hempshaw End, and she got married, and that was another thing. That was another big mistake. Some women never learn, do they?’ the young oracle asked. ‘She made a mistake inside a mistake – that’s the way she put it. I think there are going to be some big changes in Hempshaw End when all this has blown over. It all happened, you see, because this cousin wrote to her wanting to come here and see her. He had written to her two or three times over the years, but she had always ignored him, just as you or I would have done. But this time she didn’t, because one of her sisters had sent her some news about their brother, who had been out of the country for years, but had come back because there was something he had to settle. And Miss Goodwin said, well, he wasn’t the only one who had something to settle. That wasn’t really hide-and-seek they were playing about the countryside, you know, the morning they had us out looking for a dead body. What was going on was that the brother and the cousin were neither of them very far away – Miss Goodwin had fixed that. But they had to be kept apart until it was the right moment for them to be brought together. And what happened after that I don’t know, because I got stuck upstairs with that bloody teacher. What do you think happened, Mavis?’
‘Dunno. It’s so boring, innit?’
‘It’s time we got an interim report on paper,’ Grimshaw said. ‘There are going to be County Councillors asking to be genned up. Have a bash at it, will you, Beamish? Good exercise for you. I’ll be interested to see how you tackle it.’
Beamish was in the middle of this piece of arduous composition when the phone rang for him. The message bristled through the CID room like a wind of change in a cornfield.
‘Detective-Sergeant Beamish: a call from Kenya.’
Beamish sat with ballpoint poised, and actually succeeded in getting the beginnings of two sentences on paper.
‘I’ve been a bit worried, Beamish. I don’t like travelling all this way and leaving things behind me half-finished.’
‘Yes, well –’
‘I keep thinking of those cabbage plants I got for Ernie Walton. They weren’t up to much, were they? But by the time I realized that, it was too late for me to do anything about it. Be a good lad and get hold of another thirty, and put them in for him. And there’s another thing –’
‘What?’
‘I owe Ernie forty quid. Price of paying off a lorry-driver and a taxi to take Emma Rawlings off for a day with her grandniece. Get the money back off her, will you, and let Ernie have it. I’d count it as very good Neighbouring, if you would. This call’s costing the earth, so I’ll ring off now.’
‘Mr Mosley – while you’re still on the line –’
But Mosley had already cleared the line – without giving a clue as to how he could be contacted again.
The moment Detective-Superintendent Grimshaw was out of the house, Georgina Crane was in Elizabeth Stirrup’s bedroom.
‘What did you tell him? Did you hold firm?’
‘I told him what you told me to tell him – not a word more.’
If Elizabeth Stirrup had managed to appear in command of herself while Grimshaw was questioning her, she flagged the moment the pressure was off.
‘Are you quite sure? Grimshaw’s no fool – not all the time, anyway.’
It had started while Elizabeth was wallowing in her woes after the Daimler had deposited her back at the schoolhouse. Georgina had suddenly burst out in a mood in which Elizabeth had only once seen her before.
At school, Miss Crane had been much liked for the simple reason that she always behaved as if she had respect for even the least effectual of her pupils. Only once had anyone in Elizabeth’s generation seen her lose her temper, and that was over some girl who had tried to lie to her without elementary respect for her intelligence.
She had lost her temper again with Elizabeth Stirrup in the early hours of this morning: really lost it – a frightening fury. Elizabeth had said something again about getting away from here as soon as she could without making a nuisance of herself. There was a smarminess about her humility that was the last straw with the older teacher.
‘Stop snivelling! Stop feeling sorry for yourself! Stop being so disgustingly self-indulgent! Any woman with blood in her veins would have enjoyed the experience you’ve just had.’
‘Enjoyed it!’
‘Because you’ve just had the privilege of looking into somebody else’s world – and you’ve come out of it unscratched.’
‘They’re welcome to their world.’
‘It’s a damned sight better world than any you’ve set foot in in your life before. And it’s taught you nothing, has it?’
‘It’s taught me that the people up here –’
‘Are beneath your contempt? If that’s the case, then your contempt isn’t worth the curl of your upper lip. These people live their own lives, they fight out their own quarrels – and dispense their own justice. And nothing has done you any harm. All right: a man in a camel-hair coat drove you away against your will.’
When the black vintage saloon had deposited Elizabeth back at the gate, Georgina had had no difficulty in bullying the whole truth out of her. It was true, as she had told Grimshaw, that she had left the house with the intention of getting a car to Bradburn from the garage. And she had indeed run into the man in the coat. But he had seen her looking at him too keenly, too curiously, too photographically. She did not know whether it was a real or a pretend gun that he had stuck into her ribs – but he had had to take her off with him for the sake of his own security.
‘For the same reason as the Shuttleworth child was taken. Because if she had gone back to her class mates, she could have given Janie Goodwin’s position away within minutes.’
‘So you expect me to support the law-breakers – to compound a felony?’
‘Don’t be so mealy-mouthed about the law. There are felonies that aren’t in the statute book – crimes that a man gets away with without fear of prison gates. And I believe that’s the sort of offence that has been rectified within the last twelve hours not many miles from here.’
Now that they were alone together, Georgina’s anger had subsided, and Elizabeth was like hand-softened modelling-clay in her hands.
‘But what if they start questioning me again? What if they try all the interrogators’ tricks on me? I know I’d never be able to stand up to it. They’d have me altering my previous statement – and then there are all sorts of things I could be in trouble for.’
‘Well – start thinking about somebody else’s troubles for a change. Elizabeth – what do you know? What did you overhear while you were at Barker’s Clough?’
‘Nothing that I understood. Only that I was among ruthless people.’
‘You don’t begin to know them, Elizabeth.’
‘The two men were dreadful. The one who took me away – I’ve no complaint against his behaviour in the car. He was a smoothie. I dare say some women might even have been impressed by him. But the enmity betwe
en him and the other – it must have been going on for years.’
‘I’m quite sure that it has. I think it practically goes back to original sin.’
‘I thought for a moment that it was going to be a fight to the death. It would have been, but for the others. There was a whole pack of them who came, you know – all local people, I think: and Miss Goodwin was very much in control. Then they suddenly seemed to remember Brenda and me, and hustled us upstairs. And after that I only know what I was able to put together from voices that came up through the floorboards.’
‘And what did you make of what you did hear?’
‘It was almost like a sort of court. That detective Mosley drove up in the middle of it, but he only peeped in through a window, and then drove off again.’
‘Wise man! I can only assume that he had helped them to convene this meeting – and then had the sense to play no further active part in it.’
‘He sets out to be everything in this valley, does he?’
‘This valley could be a good deal worse off than it is.’
‘But it was such a mischief. Just think of the trouble that woman has caused by making it look as if her home had been wrecked.’
‘I dare say we shall eventually learn – unofficially – all that was behind it.’
‘Then there was that horrible man who came up in a lorry and started talking about a gallows. I thought there was going to be a lynching.’
‘Yes – and I dare say you weren’t the only one who thought that. I should imagine Janie Goodwin’s brother thought so too: he was meant to. I think perhaps we had better get you away from here some time this morning. I’ve no desire to turn you into a criminal, Elizabeth – but I’d hate you to break under questioning. You might help to identify people who deserve not to be identified. Is there anywhere where you could go and stay?’
‘There’s a quiet little seaside hotel I sometimes use.’
‘I think you’d better go there till term begins again. We can’t have you used as evidence against John Mosley.’
Beamish decided to wait until first dark before planting Ernie Walton’s second batch of cabbages. Case-hardened extrovert though he might seem to officers above and below him, there were hidden depths of diffidence about Beamish when it came to certain kinds of public performance. He had no wish to give a second-house demonstration of his horticultural novitiate to the silently watching allotment-holders who were Ernie’s neighbours. Consequently, it was alone by moonlight, with a bicycle lamp propped on a brick at the end of a row, that he bedded out a new and healthier-looking platoon of Webb’s Favourites. It would have been a good night for watchers of the skies – an unclouded firmament, with Orion and Cassiopeia clearly identifiable by amateurs. Below him were the wanly lighted rectangular windows of a well-lived-in village. Muffled dialogue drifted over from more than one quarter: family circles of great variation in social aspiration were all watching the same situation comedy.
And Beamish was thinking. His mind, liberated by physical activity to which he was applying a good deal of vigour, had gone as fallow as the patch on his right.
There were aspects of this case that he did not think had been properly gone into. The morning of Janie Goodwin’s disappearance, for example – how had she actually got away? How had she come out of her gate into the Hempshaw End main street without alerting the whole of Hempshaw End? How had Mosley been able to get into her garden without drawing attention to himself? Because Mosley had dropped his pipe there, under Janie’s window – and Beamish was by now convinced that this could only have been an accident. So why had Mosley gone there at all? It could only be, surely, because he had known what plan Janie had in mind, and had looked in to see if the stage had been laid – if the scene of domestic wreckage had been convincingly deployed.
When could he have done this? It had to have been fairly early that morning – before he had gone up to the Protectorate to mow Cromwell’s lawn. Again that crucial question: how had he managed not to be seen? And in a sudden access of inspiration that almost made him drive his dibber through his foot, Beamish thought he saw the answer.
But his train of inductive reasoning was interrupted by the sounds of someone behind him. All his protective senses came to the alert. The night was quiet – but by no means empty. Someone had hens roosting in a ramshackle shed from which there drifted a descant of contented murmuring. Someone else had interlaced his seed beds with hanging strips cut from kitchen foil that rustled in the slight air-movement. But the new element was of a distinctly human approach – that of a man who was taking no particular care to conceal his presence. Beamish waited until the newcomer was directly behind him, then swung round with his dibber at the on-guard position.
‘Nay, lad – tha’s no call to attack me.’
Ernie Walton. There was enough light from the bicycle lamp for him to see the results of Beamish’s activity. Ernie was not given to open statements of gratitude – but, at least, he did not seem able to find anything to criticize here.
‘Aye,’ he said, coming as near as ever in his life to expressing appreciation. ‘Did you get to see Mr Mosley, then?’
‘Actually, no. I’d half a mind to slip off to Africa for half an hour this morning, but it was standing-room only, so I didn’t fancy the trip.’
Ernie was silent for a short time. Sarcasm puzzled him: he saw no call for it.
‘But he’s been in touch with me, and I’ve got forty quid for you in my pocket.’
They walked back down to the village together, and Beamish counted out the money under a wheezing streetlamp.
‘Aye – he’s a good lad, is Mosley.’
As he stuffed the roll of notes into the back pocket of his trousers, Walton seemed to be oozing unaccustomed good will.
‘He put some time in on this business, you know.’
‘I’m sure he did.’
‘I mean, but for Mosley, we’d never have got together like that.’
‘No?’
‘Who’d have ever known who they all were?’
‘Who indeed?’
‘When Goodwin went broke, you know, it was hard on this valley. He paid half a crown in the pound, when everything was settled. That’s not a lot.’
‘I can see that.’
‘It may be all right for these big London firms. They can juggle their books. But when it’s three years’milk, and a couple of years’ eggs – I’ve known Wilson Goodwin, you know, come round to pay two quid on account – and go off with another fiver’s worth of stuff in the back of his car. It comes hard on poor folk, Mr Beamish.’
‘I’m sure it does.’
‘Janie was determined we should all be paid back in full – even if it went thirty years before that brother of hers showed up again. And she said it wasn’t to be done through the courts. Because that way there’d be preferential creditors and God knows what to be considered – and it would go another five years. But she’d no idea who was owed what. So she set Mosley on finding out and getting us all together. He’s a bloody good detective, is Mosley.’
There was another call that Beamish made on impulse, and that was on the Sisters Ledman. It came into his mind because of what he had unexpectedly learned from Ernie. He knew that Lois and Laetitia had not told him all they knew. They had probably even included a few downright lies, if only because their life’s training had been to keep all knowledge to themselves whenever possible.
It was after ten at night, but there was light behind the Ledmans’ downstairs window as he drove past on his way home from Ernie’s. He pulled up outside their gate and tapped with their knocker. At least, he tried to tap, but the heavy brasswork with its cat-and-fiddle insignia echoed sepulchrally from one side of the village to the other.
There seemed to be something going on inside the house, as if special preparations had to be made before the front door could be opened. When it did open, a chin was thrust out just above the chain, but they both seemed wholly delighted to see him, and pos
itively hustled him into their over-heated living-room.
Their home computer stood on the table, among a tangle of plugs and cables. But it was not their domestic accounts, nor a schedule of their wide-ranging penny-share portfolio that was on display. It was an intergalactic invasion by creatures who looked like a cross between bats and flying bulls.
‘You must excuse us, Mr Beamish – just the last half-hour of the day, you know.’
‘You must excuse me, too, ladies. But I happened to be passing and I just wondered …’
He wondered whether they would produce the ginger wine. But hospitality did not seem to be in their minds tonight. Perhaps they suspected that he was only here for the tipple.
‘I just wondered whether you’d thought of anything else that you felt I ought to know.’
‘Oh, I don’t think so, Mr Beamish,’ Laetitia said.
‘What sort of thing was it you had in mind?’ Lois asked.
He noticed that even as she spoke, the little one’s eyes strayed involuntarily towards the screen.
‘We are really not at all well informed, you know.’
‘Those other people, with whom you went to the farmhouse at Barker’s Clough – how many of them did you actually know?’
‘Well – one or two. Mr Walton. And old Stephen Blamire from Hadley Dale. I must say we were surprised to see him there. It turned out that his father used to supply firewood to the Hall.’
Her eyes again wandered towards the star-war. Beamish got up and went to the keyboard.
‘How do you fire the cannon?’
‘Tap Z or X for left front, N or M for right. A and L for enfilading fire from the flanks.’
Beamish pressed a key and one of the bat-bulls exploded in a purple puff.
‘Watch out, Sergeant: you’ll have a whole file of them coming down through that gap.’
It ended up with his challenging the pair of them together. He was no match for their knowledge of the idiosyncrasies of the game – but it broke the ice. It was not long after that that the information began to flow. Secretive though they were by both temperament and training, the Ledman sisters were paradoxically longing to talk.
Mosley Went to Mow Page 15