The Dreadful Hollow

by Nicholas Blake

  “I dread it. I shan’t know what to say to them. Why did it have to be me who saw—saw the body?”

  “It had to be someone, Bay,” said Stanford, with remarkable gentleness. “They won’t bully you. You just sit back and answer their questions. It’ll be easy as pie.”

  Rosebay gave him a faint, distracted smile. “But what can I tell them? I don’t know what happened. I just went out before breakfast, and I—I found him. I thought at first it was an old suit of clothes someone had thrown into the quarry. Oh, God! do you think he was thrown there? Murdered, I mean?”

  “Really, Bay, you must pull yourself together,” her sister said. “Of course he wasn’t.”

  “Do we all want to talk about this?” asked Nigel. “I think it might be a good thing.”

  “Why not? Give us a bit of net practice before we go out into the middle,” said the vicar. “But perhaps Stanford—”

  “Don’t mind me. Tell the truth and shame the Devil.”

  “Well, then, who saw Sir Archibald last?”

  “He came up here after dinner,” said Celandine. “I hadn’t wanted to see him, but he—well, he more or less forced his way in. Sorry, Stanford, but there it is.”

  “What on earth did he want up here?” Rosebay’s tone was embarrassing in its naked petulance.

  “To discuss private matters.”

  Stanford gave a ghost of his old, impish smile. “This is where the Detective-Inspector asks: ‘Did he appear to be in an agitated state?’”

  “Oh, he was agitated all right. The subject of our discussion could not have failed to upset him. But he gave no indications that he would later throw himself into the quarry,” said Celandine. “To put it quite plainly, he was in a murderous rather than a suicidal frame of mind.”

  Mark Raynham gazed at her in consternation. “Oh, come, Celandine, surely you can’t mean that?”

  “Why can’t she? I’m sure Sir Archibald would rather have seen me dead at his feet than married to his son. That’s what you were talking to him about, Dinny, wasn’t it?” Once again Rosebay’s voice left a wake of uneasy silence behind it.

  “I think we should stick to times,” suggested Nigel. “When did he leave here?”

  “About twenty past eleven.” Celandine hesitated a moment. “He was not absolutely sober. He drank rather a lot of whisky here.”

  Stanford Blick was looking at Celandine, Nigel noticed, in a peculiar way—intently, puzzled, as if studying a new formula. He said: “Pop didn’t walk over the edge, drink or no drink. He got back to the Hall about half past eleven.”

  “Did you see him return?” asked Nigel.

  “The dogs barked. Everyone else was in by then. It must have been him.”

  “So you didn’t actually see him.”

  “No. But Cook did. I asked her this morning, when I got the news. The dogs woke her. She looked out of the window—her room’s at the back, over the courtyard—and she saw him letting himself in at the back door.”

  There was a silence, while they all digested this. Then Mark Raynham blurted out: “I say, that’s rather queer, isn’t it? If he was going to kill himself in the quarry, why should he go back to his house first?”

  “He didn’t kill himself,” said Stanford grimly. “Nor did he go out again, apparently. That was the last time anyone heard the dogs barking.”

  “But it’s impossible,” said the vicar. “He must have gone out again. Damn it, he was found in the quarry.”

  “The dogs wouldn’t bark if someone went quietly out of the front door and made a detour, would they?” asked Nigel.

  Stanford frowned. “No. That’s true. But why make such a detour, so as not to disturb the dogs, if you know you are taking your last walk?”

  “Was your brother at home?”

  “Yes. We both went to bed fairly early, soon after ten-thirty. Charles had to start early for the factory this morning.”

  “Well, it’s all very mysterious,” said Celandine; “but there must be some simple explanation.”

  If there was a simple explanation, it did not suggest itself to the group who were sitting in the Chief Constable’s study that afternoon. The results of the autopsy on Sir Archibald’s body had just come through. He had died between ten o’clock and midnight. His neck had been broken, and he had received head injuries, presumably in the fall from the quarry’s edge. Traces of blood had been found on jutting parts of the quarry cliff which he had struck in falling; this suggested that he was still alive when he fell, and in conjunction with the absence of any signs of a struggle up above, argued for suicide or accident. Examination of the organs had revealed a large but not a lethal dose of sleeping powder. This last was the fact which had put a worried frown on the Chief Constable’s forehead. At first, it seemed to fit in with the theory of suicide. As Major Beale had said:

  “Straightforward enough, isn’t it? Blick was in a suicidal frame of mind. Couldn’t quite face chucking himself over the edge in cold blood, though he’d been drinking heavily at Miss Chantmerle’s, to nerve himself for it. Goes home. Takes a strong sleeping draught. Slips out again quickly, in case anyone comes up and tries to stop him. Walks round to the quarry. By the time he gets there, he’s pretty well drugged and can throw himself off with a minimum of discomfort. How’s that, Randall?”

  “I don’t altogether like it, sir,” said the Inspector. “What reason had he to kill himself? We know that his financial position was sound. His health was good, for his age. He’d nothing on his mind except this business of his son and Miss Rosebay. He went up to the Little Manor to browbeat Miss Celandine into taking his side against those two marrying. She refused to do so, according to her own evidence—and there’s no reason for disbelieving it. What’d we expect him to do next? Not fling himself into the quarry in a huff because she wouldn’t co-operate. He wasn’t that kind of man. If he was so set on stopping the marriage, he’d make sure to stay alive.”

  “He’d go back to the Hall, and have it out with Charles straight off, eh?” said Major Beale keenly.

  “Just so. He wasn’t one who let the grass grow under his feet. Look what he’d done that afternoon all within a few hours of arriving—kicked up a shindy at the works, sent for Mr. Strangeways about the anonymous letter, given Stanford a rocket for overspending, interviewed Mr. Raynham and Daniel Durdle, and then gone up to see Miss Chantmerle. A busy day. Hopping mad, he was, all round. He needed a sleeping draught, I reckon. Question is, who gave it to him?” The Inspector turned to Nigel. “The housemaid at the Hall says there were no dirty glasses anywhere this morning.”

  “Your point being that a prospective suicide wouldn’t bother to wash up the glass after he’d taken a sleeping draught?”

  “I shouldn’t think Sir Archibald had ever washed up a glass in his life,” said the Chief Constable.

  “And there’s this too,” Nigel put in. “Why go to all the business of throwing yourself into a quarry when you’ve got enough sleeping powder to kill yourself quietly at home?”

  “Well,” said the Chief Constable after a pause, “the team is skeptical about suicide. What about accident?”

  “If he’d not been seen arriving home, and if the sleeping draught hadn’t been found in him, it’d be just possible he might have shot out of the Little Manor, blind with rage, taken the wrong direction and walked over the edge. It was a darkish night. As it is—” the Inspector shrugged his shoulders.

  “I agree. Accident is out, then,” said Major Beale briskly. “Who did it, Randall, my son?”

  The Inspector’s mild, clever eyes rested for a moment on his superior. “One of the brothers, looks like. Plenty of motive there, what with the old man’s money and his opposition to the marriage. They both say they didn’t see him alive again after dinner, when he left the house. Suppose, when he came back, he went up to have it out with Charles; threatened to sack him and cut him off with a shilling if he married Miss Rosebay. Sir Archibald takes a sleeping draught, or Charles slips it into his d
rink, at some time while they’re arguing. Nobody’d hear them—the servants’ quarters are well away from the family rooms. Charles carries his father up to the quarry, asleep. Same would apply for Stanford. He stands to inherit the greater part of his father’s fortune, so he told me. Sir Archibald weighed very light. Either of them could have carried him up there. What do you say, Mr. Strangeways?”

  “They wouldn’t have much margin of time. If midnight is the outside limit, as the doctors say, it’d all have to be done in half an hour—quarrel with father; sleeping draught to take effect; body to be carried the best part of a mile, allowing for a detour to avoid rousing those dogs again. It could be done, perhaps, but you’d have to stop and rest now and then, taking even a featherweight that distance. And wouldn’t it be damned risky?”

  “You’re making investigations about any suspicious movements seen that night, Randall?” asked the Chief Constable.

  “Yes, sir. It’s our main line of inquiry at the moment.”

  “Durdle been taking any more nocturnal walks?” Nigel said.

  “Funny you should mention that. I’d had a couple of men keeping an eye on him in relays. That’s how we knew he couldn’t have sent this last batch of anonymous letters. Neither he nor his mother stirred out of the house over the period when they must have been posted. So I took off the men. Couldn’t spare ’em longer, anyway. Well, last night, Durdle goes and gets half croaked at the New Inn.”

  “Half croaked? He was attacked?”

  “No, sir. It’s our way of saying half-seas over, hereabouts. This was after his interview with Sir Archibald. He left the pub at ten o’clock. He and his mother both swore at first that he got home five minutes later. But we have a witness who says he saw him returning to the village about eleven-thirty, along the road from the Hall. Confronted with this evidence, Durdle admitted he had not got home at ten-five: said he’d got a bit drunk, tried to walk it off—reckon he was afraid to go home to that mother of his till he’d sobered up—fallen into a ditch and gone to sleep for a bit. He’d been letting off steam about Sir Archibald at the New Inn, too.”

  “Well, he’s out,” said Major Beale. “That witness gives him a fair alibi. Unless you’re suggesting he went back again to the Hall soon after eleven-thirty, and somehow inveigled Blick outside and murdered him.”

  “Oh no, he’s not worth considering, sir, I agree.”

  “I wonder,” said Nigel. The other two regarded him with some astonishment. “Let me see that deposition again—the cook’s at the Hall.. . . Yes. Here we are. Woken by dogs’ barking. Got out of bed. Went to window. Just got a glimpse of Sir Archibald below—thought he was walking a bit unsteady—wondered if he was ill.”

  “What are you getting at?”

  “We’ve assumed it must have been Sir Archibald, and the unsteady walk was the result of too much whisky at the Little Manor. Well, Durdle was drunk too, or had been. Suppose he met Sir Archibald leaving the Chantmerles’. Knocked him insensible—the body had head injuries. Threw him into the quarry. Suppose Durdle then tries to manufacture an alibi. He’s no fool, mind you. He walks down to the Hall and pretends to let himself in. The cook sees him from above, foreshortened; she wouldn’t expect it to be anyone but Sir Archibald, and she’s dazed with sleep anyway. Durdle has a black suit and hat—we must find out if he was wearing them at the New Inn. Easiest thing on earth for the cook to mistake him for Sir A.”

  “I’ll have another word with her,” said Inspector Randall. “Find out if she actually heard him come into the house, how long she was at the window, and so on. You think he might have slipped off again while the dogs were still barking?”

  The Chief Constable broke in impatiently, “But it won’t do. It’s an ingenious theory, but it falls down on the sleeping draught. When did Blick take it, if he never returned home?”

  “He might have asked Miss Chantmerle for some.”

  “You’d think she’d have mentioned it, then, in her evidence.”

  “People forget things under stress. Was she asked about it, Randall?”

  “No, Mr. Strangeways. We didn’t know the findings of the autopsy when I interviewed her. I’ll check up on that as well.”

  Nigel gazed at him abstractedly for a moment. Then he said, “And while we’re on the subject of impersonations, I’d like to point out that there’s somebody else who has dark clothes and hat, an unsteady walk, and a good reason for disliking the deceased . . . Mark Raynham.”

  11 A Gray Old Wolf, and a Lean

  THE BLICK CASE rapidly graduated from a village sensation to a national calamity. Reporters and feature writers swarmed down upon Prior’s Umborne, whose natives met the invasion with one eye upon the main chance, the other upon the never-staling rural pleasure of leading the townsman up the garden path. Free beer and untrammeled fantasy flowed in equal proportions. None proved more adept at the latter than Stanford Blick, who stuffed the more gullible newspapermen—and nobody is more innocently credulous than the hard-bitten newshound in search of a story—with enough pure milk of invention to have nurtured a dozen Munchausens. Reams of paper, hours of telephone time were expended upon the communication of human-interest stories and criminal theories only less fantastic than the solemn obituaries in which the national dailies and weeklies paid their tribute to the dead man’s career.

  Sir Archibald, it transpired, was not only “Mystery Financier Found Dead in Quarry” and “Millionaire Magnate Murdered?”; he had also been a steadying influence on the national economy, an apostle of eugenics, a sound churchman, a simple family man who liked nothing better than a quiet evening by his own fireside, a modest and likable personality though of austere convictions, a corrupt lackey of the Tory card-playing clique, and an Hon. D.C.L. of Cambridge University. No expense was spared, no cliché left unturned, to present to the British public a picture of the deceased which should accord with the newspaper proprietor’s policy and the editor’s notion of what his readers wanted.

  The canonization of Sir Archibald Blick had hardly begun, and Superintendent Blount was still on his way down to Moreford, instructed by his Assistant Commissioner to take over the case, Major Beale having called in New Scotland Yard immediately after the conference recorded in the last chapter, when Nigel found himself sitting with Celandine Chantmerle and the vicar on the lawn of the Little Manor.

  He had returned to the village with Inspector Randall, and been present at this second interview with the Hall cook. This good lady was not now prepared to swear that it was Sir Archibald whom she had seen below her window the night before last. She had seen little of the figure, indeed, being directly above it. But she retained the impression of a dark hat and suit, or overcoat, picked out for a moment as the figure moved in a stream of dimmish light cast through the curtains by a bulb in the kitchen—Sir Archibald had asked for this to be left on, in case he returned late. He had said he would come in by the back door, it being the nearest to the Little Manor, and would turn off the kitchen light himself. Two interesting points emerged here: the light was still burning next morning, and the cook had left the door locked, and found it locked next day. She could not be certain whether the man had actually entered the house. She could not have heard a key in the lock, or the door opening and shutting, because the dogs were creating such a din; and she had gone back to bed at once, so had not seen whatever movements the figure made after approaching the door. Her impression had been so slight and momentary that nothing could be built upon it, one way or the other; but she held firmly to her statement that the few steps she had seen it taking were queer-like. Yes, he might have been a little the worse for liquor—certainly seemed unsteady on his pins, she said. Did it look like the gait of a man who had been injured? Well, it might have been. Or a man with a limp? Not exactly like a limp; more like the way a toddler walks; still, it could have been a gammy leg—sort of unbalanced—but she just couldn’t be sure.

  The Inspector, after questioning the other maids, and Sir Archibald’s valet,
who were heavy sleepers and had not even been awakened by the dogs, went on with Nigel to the Little Manor. Celandine Chantmerle greeted them with her most enchanting smile, and suggested they should all go out into the garden. The vicar lifted her into her electric carriage, which stood outside the front door.

  “I’m afraid you’ll have to push me,” she said. “The battery ran out yesterday, and it’s not back from the garage yet.”

  “What a nuisance for you, Miss Chantmerle,” said the Inspector, adroitly placing himself behind the carriage before the vicar could get there. “How long has it been out of action?”

  “It packed up on me yesterday. I’d been for rather a long drive in the afternoon. Luckily I was nearly home when it gave out.”

  “You ought to keep spare batteries, Celandine,” said Mark Raynham.

  “I saw you’d been up to the quarry recently,” the Inspector remarked to Miss Chantmerle.

  Mark swung round on him with a stern expression. “You’re not trying to bully Miss Chantmerle, I hope.”

  “Oh really, Mark, don’t be so silly. You know I often go up there. I went yesterday, actually. I suppose you saw the wheel tracks, Inspector.”

  “That’s so, ma’am.”

  “And measured the indentations, I suppose?” put in Nigel, playing up to Randall’s little game.

  “Indentations! Whatever’s this?” cried Celandine gaily. “Am I under suspicion?”

  “You see, ma’am, it’s like this,” said the Inspector in his ambling, amiable voice. “Suppose someone had wanted to convey a body up to the quarry, and had borrowed your carriage for the purpose, the combined weight of two people would have left deeper tracks than the ones you’d made yourself the same afternoon. Of course, as the conveyance was out of action, you tell me, the only way this person could have used it would be to push the body there in it. And that would leave impressions no deeper than you did, the late Sir Archibald being a man of light weight.”

  While, with his blandest expression, the Inspector was beginning this discourse, they had passed round the house into the garden, where Rosebay was weeding a bed nearby. Nigel noticed her figure stiffen, and a hand poised tensely with the little fork in its grasp, as she listened, stooping, to Randall’s exposition. Then, seeing Nigel’s eye upon her, she hastily dug the fork into a clump of leaves.