A Grave Case of Murder

by Roger Bax

  “Not if you knew the place was being watched all the time, Chief.”

  “We can fix that. We can give the impression that we’re withdrawing the guard from the churchyard tomorrow night. That’s easily arranged.”

  “It’s worth a trial,” Maddox agreed. The prospect of action pleased him. “Would you like me to take care of the propaganda?”

  “All right, Sergeant, but don’t overdo it. And don’t forget Gwynn. That reminds me—there’s a little experiment I want to conduct in the churchyard first thing tomorrow. I’ll need your help.”

  “Very good, sir,” said Maddox.

  Chapter Twenty One

  Monks Farm had never appeared more peaceful than it did on the following morning. The air was still; the autumn sun was just beginning to break through a thin mist. Thomas had gone into Judiford. Barbara Rutherford was up in the Ancient’s room. Marion Appleby was cutting Michaelmas daisies in the garden.

  Suddenly the quietness of the morning was shattered by the sound of a noisy altercation, coming from the direction of the rustic seat. A man was shouting in such menacing tones that it seemed as though blows must follow at any moment. Marion mentally recoiled at the thought of more violence, but she was not the woman to turn her back on trouble. Firmly clasping a pair of heavy gardening scissors, she hurried along the path toward the elm grove.

  The man, whoever it was, seemed beside himself with anger. “You don’t love me,” he was shouting. “You never have loved me. I’d like to break your blasted neck.”

  Marion heard a savage blow and broke into a run. As she burst through the bushes, she saw a man standing beside the seat, his back toward her, a thick stick in his right hand. “You dirty little slut,” he cried. “How do I know you’re telling the truth? I tell you I haven’t had a day off for nearly a month and if this goes on much longer I’m going to make trouble. It’s a dog’s life. Making all that fuss about expenses and all I had was eight half pints. What do you mean, I’m married?—I’ve never been married in my life. I wouldn’t go near a ruddy woman except in the line of duty, they’re all a ruddy pain in the neck. Gosh, I’d like to tear you apart and rebuild you!” The stick cracked down on the seat.

  Marion gave an astonished gasp, and Sergeant Maddox swung round. She peered past him to make quite sure that there was no one there, and then stared at him in utter bewilderment.

  “Are you feeling ill, Sergeant?”

  Maddox turned a deep red. “I’m quite all right, thank you, Miss Appleby,” he said sheepishly. “I didn’t know you were there—sorry if I frightened you.”

  “Your language frightened me,” said Marion severely. “What do you suppose you’re doing?”

  “Practicing for a play, ma’ am,” the sergeant said glibly. “Amateur theatricals—always was keen. It’s a show we’re getting up for the police concert.”

  “Well!—I’ve never heard of such a thing. Will you kindly go and practice somewhere else? I know your work sometimes brings you into our garden, but it’s quite disgraceful of you to come here shouting and swearing like that. I’ve a very good mind to report you.” She turned indignantly and marched back to the house.

  Maddox mopped his forehead and looked chastened. Presently he gave a little shrug and moved toward the lich gate. He stood idly in the road for a few minutes. Then Inspector James emerged from the church and joined him.

  “Serves you right, Sergeant,” he said with a grin. “That’ll teach you to work off old grouses under the thin disguise of duty.”

  “You said I was to let myself go, Chief,” Maddox grumbled. “Could you hear me all right?”

  “Hear you! I’ll say so. Practically every word when you raised your voice. It’s almost like being in an open room up in that belfry. A perfect view, too—I could even see you brandishing your stick. Yes, things are much clearer—from up there.”

  Chapter Twenty Two

  The day passed uneventfully. To James it seemed a long one—he was always restless during these inevitable periods of lull, when all the routine work appeared to have been done and still no final conclusions could be drawn. At such times, he had found, discussion helped to clear the mind. He spent the morning in conference with Superintendent Bell and Colonel Armitage and in the afternoon went up to London to go over the whole case with his chief.

  He was back in Judiford in good time to keep the appointment he had made with Maddox. Shortly after dusk his car dropped him near the church and he made his way quietly to the lich gate and past the still-open grave toward the oak wood. He picked his steps with care, for it was very dark among the trees and he was carrying a lot of impedimenta. The pocket of his thick overcoat bulged with a flask of coffee, a packet of sandwiches and a powerful torch. Over one arm, a groundsheet was draped. As he approached the bushes that lay between the oak wood and the Farm there was a low whistle from somewhere on his right. He turned his steps toward the sound and in a moment had joined the sergeant.

  “This about the right spot, Chief?” asked Maddox in a hoarse whisper.

  “Yes, it’ll do very nicely.” James peered through the gloom. From where they were they had an unobstructed view across the lawn to the house, they could see across to the road, and they were only a few paces from the tree where the gun was hidden. “All quiet, Sergeant?”

  “All quiet, sir. The constable has just gone off duty as arranged. Everything’s been fixed—he called at the Farm to ask if he could use their telephone and the conversation at his end made it clear that he was being taken off. He says the sitting room door was ajar, and he spoke loudly. They’ve got their chance if they want to take it.”

  James grunted and spread out the groundsheet on the deep grass. “A pretty slim chance for us, I’m afraid. I must have been crazy to suggest this Boy Scout stuff.”

  “You’ll feel differently about it if we catch the murderer,” said Maddox.

  “All I’ll catch is pneumonia. I’m getting too old for this sort of thing.” The inspector lowered himself cautiously on to the groundsheet, located and removed a sharp three-cornered stone from the spot he had sat down on, and made himself as comfortable as possible. Presently he gave a faint chuckle. “Do you remember the last time we were out all night, Maddox? The Bellenger exhumation at Whitstable? My God, it was cold that night. I don’t know how they got their picks into the ground.” He looked toward the Farm, where several rooms were lit up. “The family seems to be at home, anyway. Let’s hope they decide to go to bed early. You managed to get the information over to Gwynn, did you?”

  “Yes, I told him the tale while I was taking his prints.”

  “Any reaction?”

  “No, he’s a deadpan. He just looked glum.”

  “He’ll look glummer pretty soon. The time has just about come for a showdown with Master Gwynn, but I thought I’d wait until after tonight. We’ll have to keep our eyes open—if he’s the chap, he may come across the fields.”

  “He’s hardly likely to start till much later.”

  “Probably not. I dare say we shall have to make a night of it.”

  The inspector sat quietly for a while. It wasn’t too unpleasant out here after all. The night was cloudy and somewhat humid, but the air was soft and fragrant. Not everyone’s cup of tea, of course, the neighborhood of a churchyard at night, but to James it looked like being a dreary rather than an eerie wait. The moist vapors that writhed among the ancient headstones made him think of rheumatism rather than of ghosts. The dampness deadened sound. Except when the church clock measured the quarters or a car or bicycle went by on the road, the silence was complete.

  Conversation came in snatches. James took the opportunity to tell his colleague of the discussions he had had during the day. “Armitage is very worried, but he hasn’t any practical suggestions to make. And the Yard can’t say much when they haven’t even found that car.” He brooded for a while. “Your grapevine doesn’t seem to have yielded anything yet, Sergeant.”

  “It will, sir,” said Mad
dox confidently. “Slow but sure, that’s how it works.”

  “H’m. It worked pretty fast when Fred Pepper blew his top off about the watch. I’ll give that chatterbox a piece of my mind next time I see him.” He drew his coat more closely round him. “Let’s hope you’re right, anyway. We’re certainly due for a stroke of luck.”

  Maddox agreed. “I suppose we’ll have to ask for an adjournment at the inquest?”

  “It looks like it. We’ve plenty of suspects but not a shred of real evidence. Certainly nothing definite enough to put before a jury—and what we have I want to keep to ourselves.”

  “The vicar’s getting anxious,” said Maddox. “I ran into him today. He wants to know when he’ll be able to have the churchyard reconsecrated.”

  “I expect he does. I hear they’ve had to bury Peckitt somewhere else. I don’t imagine we’ll be able to hand over for a day or two, though.”

  “Things may look quite different by tomorrow,” said Maddox. He peered through the bushes. “Who do you think is most likely to come out after the gun, sir—if anyone? Barbara Rutherford?”

  “Is that your guess, Sergeant?”

  “I wouldn’t put any money on it,” said Maddox. He grinned in the darkness. “Too bad if old William Appleby himself came tottering out in his nightshirt! That would shake us.”

  “Too bad if Gertie did! That would shake you, Sergeant.”

  “You don’t suppose, Chief,” said Maddow, ignoring the remark, “that two or three of them could have done the job between them? Turning blind eyes and giving each other alibis and that sort of thing?”

  “I should hardly think so. They’re not exactly a co-operative family—judging by the way they speak of each other, anyway. You should hear the old man on the subject of Thomas! The only thing they seem to agree on is how fine it is to be an Appleby.”

  “That’s just the point,” Maddox said. “That’s why they resented Hutton and joined together in bumping him off. Didn’t want the family name dragged in the dirt. It could have worked very well. The old man watches from his bedroom window, ready to give the signal for action when he sees that the coast is clear. Thomas keeps Barbara Rutherford in conversation at the back of the house. Auntie Marion dashes out and polishes off the villain, and boy friend Gwynn sits up in the church tower so that he can swear that nothing whatever happened. Then they all say they heard no shots, and wait for the case to fold up.”

  “M’m. It might do for a thriller, but I doubt if families conspire to murder in real life—not even to save the lovely daughter of the house from worse than death. I’ve never heard of it happening. And think of the strain afterward, with all that on their collective conscience.”

  “They’re a tough bunch.”

  “Oh, they’re tough, I agree—every one of them. Whoever did the job is putting on a remarkable act. Of course, we haven’t had an opportunity to turn the heat on yet. We don’t know enough. When we do, the murderer will crack. You’ll see.”

  “I know, sir—I’ve watched you. Hold your fire and wait till you see the whites of their eyes! That reminds me, I could do with something to eat.”

  “I don’t see the connection.”

  “Hard-boiled eggs, sir. You’ll find some in your packet, too. Crikey, they’ll hear this paper rustling in Judiford.”

  They munched in silence for a while. The trickle of traffic along the road was drying up. The last bus for Judiford stopped by the church and rumbled away in a double-decked blaze of light, leaving the night darker than ever. The clock struck ten. As the last stroke died away, a light flashed on in one of the upper rooms, and someone drew the curtain.

  “That’s Marion Appleby’s room,” said James, who had memorized the geography of the house during his search for the gun. “The old man’s is on this side of the house, too—I expect he’s been asleep for hours. Thomas’s room looks out the other way, but I dare say we’ll see the glow of his light. Barbara Rutherford’s is also on the far side, and your popsy sleeps a floor higher, if you’re interested.”

  “A passing weakness,” murmured Maddox. He was thinking about the layout of the house. “Rather a point, Chief, that Barbara Rutherford and Thomas Appleby are both on the same side away from the churchyard. They were both using their rooms on Saturday evening—that could account for them not seeing or hearing anything.”

  “And if Marion Appleby was in the kitchen, which is also on the other side, she might not have heard much either. Three of them safely out of the way while the murderer gets to work, eh? That seems to leave us with the old man, though—something wrong there. Or Gwynn, of course, though he wouldn’t have known the dispositions in the house. The trouble is that we simply don’t know who to believe. It still seems to me to have been a frightful risk for anyone to take, wherever the various members of the family were at the time.”

  “You don’t think,” Maddox suggested, “that the murderer could have been actually in the grave when Hutton walked by—sort of lying in wait for him? He’d have had a bit of cover there. He might have scrambled out as Hutton approached, had his little difference of opinion, shoved him in, shot him, and then hidden in the grave again—on top of the body, if you see what I mean. That way, he’d have reduced the risk of discovery quite a lot.”

  James munched thoughtfully. “It’s a new angle, Sergeant. Still, nobody could reasonably have supposed that Hutton would walk through the churchyard with a gun. We’ve been over all that.”

  They fell silent again. Presently a beam of light cut across the garden from the side window of Thomas Appleby’s room. Thomas was evidently on his way to bed. The downstairs rooms were dark. Fifteen minutes passed and then his light went out too and the house became invisible in the blackness. Time seemed to go by more slowly now. Every now and again one of the policemen changed his position to ease the cramp. A solitary villager pedaled homeward on a whirring bicycle. In the distance a dog barked once or twice, and from far away came the sound of a train whistle. There was a stir in the air, a precursor of wind. After a while, the church clock struck half-past eleven. Maddox seemed to be dozing.

  “Having a nice nap, Sergeant?”

  “Never been more awake in my life, sir.”

  “Good. If our friend Gwynn comes upon us there may be a roughhouse. I think he could be an ugly customer.” Suddenly James sat up, all his senses alert. “What was that?”

  They listened tensely. It was so quiet that they could hear drops of moisture dripping from the twigs. “False alarm,” murmured Maddox presently, and they relaxed.

  Another quarter of an hour passed, and then they both heard something. From across the lawn had come a faint creaking, like the noise of a heavy door being cautiously opened. The loom of the dark house just showed against the sky. The two men waited motionless, straining their ears.

  James whispered, “If it is someone, we mustn’t move too soon. Don’t forget we can’t prove a thing until he’s actually got the gun in his hands.”

  “Okay, Chief,” said Maddox under his breath. There was utter silence again. Suddenly the church clock began to strike twelve and James swore softly to himself. Until the last stroke had died away there was no hope of hearing anything. Somewhere a cock crowed and another replied. Then, up near the house, there was another sound that set the inspector’s pulse racing—the unmistakable crunch of shoes on gravel. Someone was outside the house, and moving furtively. It was all James could do to prevent himself switching on his torch and satisfying his curiosity there and then.

  Now the sounds had stopped again. The midnight prowler had presumably negotiated the gravel path and was beginning to cross the lawn toward the bushes.

  “Hope he doesn’t fall over us,” James muttered. “I can’t see a damn thing.” He strained his ears to catch any hint of movement. His nerves were on edge. It wasn’t going to be at all easy to spring the trap just at the right moment.

  There was a soughing of wind in the oaks, a fanning of mild air through the churchyard, and sud
denly up at the house a door slammed—the door that opened on to the lawn, by the sound of it. James gripped his torch. Over on the grass a twig snapped—someone was still moving there, not twenty yards away.

  A second later a light appeared on the top landing and the lawn became a pattern of shadows. James started forward, his finger ready on the torch button. A dark shape was scurrying back to the house. From inside, somewhere, a voice called loudly, “Is that you, Uncle Thomas?” It was Barbara Rutherford’s voice. There was no answer and she called out again, sharply, “Who’s down there?”

  “We’ve got to find out who it is,” muttered James. “Blast!” He snapped on the big torch and directed its brilliant beam toward the house. There was a sharp cry of fear as the head and shoulders of a woman were caught in its rays.

  “Marion Appleby!” exclaimed the inspector. “Well, I’ll be damned!”

  Chapter Twenty Three

  The sudden disturbance had roused the household, and as James and Maddox pounded across the lawn the lights of the Farm came on one after the other. The inspector gave a loud bang on the door through which Marion had disappeared and turned the handle without waiting for an invitation. Thomas and Barbara were hurrying downstairs in dressing gowns, Thomas with a heavy stick in his hand. Marion, white-faced, and frightened, was standing irresolutely in the middle of the hall.

  “What’s going on?” cried Thomas. “Inspector James, what on earth are you doing here at this time of night? Marion, what’s the matter with you? Has everyone gone mad?”