‘You’ve got to be careful with the sediment,’ said Jack conversationally.
‘You have,’ said Sam, pleased at this evidence of fellow-feeling. ‘There’s plenty who don’t understand a White Shield. That’s well poured,’ said Sam, nodding to the landlady in approval.
‘That’s only what you’d expect in this house,’ said the landlady, accepting the praise as her due. ‘These gents were asking if anyone had seen a car or a lorry near the chantry on Saturday night.’
Sam Catton took a sip of his White Shield. ‘I don’t know about no car, but I was near the chantry on Saturday night. It would be about quarter past one, I reckon. I heard the church clock strike a bit before.’
The landlady leaned forward and lowered her voice portentously. ‘The thing about the chantry is that it’s not a normal place.’
‘I couldn’t agree more,’ said Jack fervently.
‘How come no one hardly ever goes in?’ demanded the landlady. ‘It’s not a proper church, that’s why. There’s a tomb there. And treasure, so I’ve heard. They do say,’ she added, lowering her voice, ‘as how the old man comes looking for his treasure.’ Mr Stroud made another dismissive noise which she ignored. ‘It’s because he weren’t buried properly where he wanted to be. Sam heard noises, didn’t you?’
‘On Saturday night?’ asked Bill sharply.
Mr Stroud laughed. ‘Oh yes? What was it? A ghost going “Woo” and clanking its chains?’
‘Of course not, you daft old beggar,’ said Sam. ‘No.’ He hunched his shoulders and breathed stentoriously. ‘No, this was knocking. You can laugh, Gilbert Stroud, but I know what I heard. As I say, that was gone one in the morning.’
‘And what was you doing up at the chantry at gone one in the morning?’
Jack let his eyes flicker to the cut of Sam’s coat, with its large pockets and the dog flopped at his feet. Both the dog and the coat were suggestive. ‘Rabbits?’ he said softly.
Sam hesitated, then slowly grinned. ‘Perhaps.’
‘You told me it sounded like someone was trying to get out,’ put in the landlady. ‘Gave me shivers, that did.’
Mr Stroud in his role as sceptic, laughed once more. ‘That’s a good ’un. How come you didn’t go and let ’em out then?’
‘Not ruddy likely,’ said Sam. He reached down and ruffled the dog’s head. ‘It isn’t natural. Even old Bessie here wouldn’t face that. Dogs know more than we think.’
Mr Stroud didn’t say anything but his face registered complete disbelief.
‘Why don’t you take a walk round one night with your Shep?’ asked Sam. ‘I’ll be surprised if she wants to go anywhere near the chantry. Maybe you’ll trust her even if you don’t believe me.’
Mr Stroud’s face fell. ‘Poor old Shep,’ he said. ‘Didn’t you hear, Sam? I lost her last week. She must’ve eaten some rat poison or some such, because she took ill and died. Had that dog for years, I did.’
The haunting or non-haunting of the chantry was forgotten in a wave of sympathy for the departed Shep.
‘Rat poison,’ said Bill thoughtfully as they walked away. ‘That could be nothing more than a coincidence or …’
‘Or it could be very useful for someone not to have a dog around to put the night-watchman on the alert,’ said Jack.
‘Exactly,’ agreed Bill. ‘Come on, Jack. I want to get back to London. After being handed a lead like that about the chantry, I want a search warrant and Sir Douglas Lynton’s blessing. Something was going on there on Saturday night and I’m going to find out what it was without any chance that pompous stuffed shirt Lythewell will step in to raise any objections.’
‘Right you are,’ agreed Jack.
They reached the Spyker, still safely parked by the bench under the shade of the oak tree.
‘Let’s see what we know,’ said Jack as he slipped the clutch and drove up the hill out of Whimbrell Heath. ‘First things first. Someone – someone from this village – committed a murder on Saturday night.’
Bill took a deep breath. ‘Murder it is. Even though we haven’t any irrefutable evidence of that.’
‘You’re planning to take the chantry apart on a hunch?’
‘All right,’ conceded Bill. ‘We’ve got more than a hunch. Murder it is,’ he repeated. ‘I doubt I’d get a warrant for anything less than suspected murder in the circumstances. I wish we had a line on the victim, though.’
‘Let’s see where we get, yes? Righty-ho. Someone – someone local – knew Signora Bianchi was going to be away and someone thought they would be undisturbed.’
‘How did the murderer get their victim into the cottage?’
Jack shrugged. ‘That’s something I can’t answer at the moment, but presumably, unless the victim was local and came on foot, they arrived by car or train.’
‘Where would the car be parked?’ asked Bill. ‘We know a car can’t get down Pollard Wynd.’
‘There’s the other road, Greymare Lane, that runs along the bottom of the village. Pollard Wynd leads off it. Miss Wingate didn’t see a car, but it could be parked out of sight somewhere along there. In fact,’ said Jack, ‘why don’t we go and have a look now?’
Greymare Lane was much as Betty Wingate had described. It was a long dirt-track with deep ditches on either side, with trees overhanging the lane. Jack drove slowly along the lane until the turning for Pollard Wynd and the brick bulk of Signora Bianchi’s cottage came into sight. After Pollard Wynd the road curved in a long bend.
Jack stopped the car and they both got out.
‘There have been cars along here,’ said Bill. ‘I can see tyre tracks.’ He looked back along the lane. ‘I can’t see the cottage from here.’
Jack looked up at the arching beeches. ‘It’d be very gloomy at night under these trees. A car could be left here quite easily, out of sight of both the cottage and Pollard Wynd. What d’you think? The victim could’ve arrived by car. If it was parked along here, Miss Wingate wouldn’t have seen it.’
‘That’s true,’ agreed Bill as they got back into the Spyker. Jack reversed the car in the entrance to Pollard Wynd and headed back down Greymare Lane.
‘The victim could have come to Whimbrell Heath by train and been picked up at the station,’ said Bill. ‘I suppose we can make enquiries. The porter or ticket collector might remember a stranger.’
Jack pulled a face. ‘They might. The trouble is that this is Surrey, not the wilds of the countryside. I imagine the railway station is fairly busy, especially with the new building going on.’
‘I wish we had a line on the victim,’ said Bill once more. ‘We know the victim’s a woman, but that’s about all we do know.’
Jack went to speak, then hesitated. ‘Leave that to one side for a moment, eh?’
‘Okay,’ said Bill after a pause. ‘I can see you’ve got an idea, but all in good time. Now, because the victim was a woman and because we know from Miss Wingate the woman was strangled, I’m going to presume the murderer was a man. Strangulation takes some strength.’
‘Not if a scarf or something similar is used,’ objected Jack, driving out of the shadows of Greymare Lane and back onto the main road. ‘However, for the time being, I agree. We can take as read it was a planned crime because of the chloroform and what-have-you, but what we’ve found out today makes it seem even more planned.’
‘Poisoning the watchman’s dog?’ asked Bill with a lift of his eyebrows.
‘Exactly.’
‘And that brings us to where the body was taken. The chantry.’ Rather to Bill’s surprise, Jack didn’t reply. ‘Do you think the body’s hidden in there?’ demanded Bill bluntly.
Jack made an impatient gesture. ‘I don’t know what else to think. Anyone in Lythewell and Askern can get hold of the key, but I’m blowed if I know where they hid the body once they got it in there. I had a fairly good look round.’
‘Behind something? Underneath something? Inside something?’ suggested Bill. ‘That knocking Sam Catton heard
at one in the morning means there was something going on in there. Whatever it is, we’ll find it if it’s there to be found. I just wish I could get some sort of angle on who the victim was.’
‘Yes …’ said Jack, again with the hesitation in his voice. ‘Bill, I’m going to make an assumption. I’m going to assume the murderer is connected with Lythewell and Askern.’
‘Fair enough,’ said Bill in mild surprise. ‘I can’t say that’s too far-fetched, especially now we know about the chantry.’
‘A murder,’ said Jack, ‘is one way to solve a problem. A person is inconvenient and therefore they are removed. Right?’
‘All right,’ agreed Bill. ‘I don’t know where you’re going and it all sounds a bit cold-blooded, but yes, you’re right.’
‘Now we thought, quite reasonably, that Signora Bianchi was the problem. And, indeed, she certainly was and is a problem, but not the problem.’ He grinned. ‘She proved that, very conclusively.’
‘Don’t remind me,’ muttered Bill. ‘I’ll never forget her waltzing in like that. Never.’
‘However,’ said Jack, disregarding his friend’s grumbles, ‘I think we may have witnessed the birth of another problem for someone connected with Lythewell and Askern.’
Bill looked at him blankly.
‘The exhibition?’ prompted Jack. ‘There was a woman there who behaved very oddly indeed, if you recall.’
‘The flag-seller, you mean?’
Jack nodded. ‘The flag-seller. What’s more, because it was at the exhibition, all the Lythewell and Askern lot were present.’
Bill laughed. ‘And because of that, you think our victim might be Mrs Whatever-she-was-called? The flag-seller?’
‘Mrs Joan McAllister. Yes, I think she might be. I ran into her after the exhibition, if you remember, and I thought she definitely had something up her sleeve.’
Bill shrugged. ‘Just as you like. At least we’ve got her name. She was taken to the Charing Cross hospital, wasn’t she? I presume she gave her address to the hospital, so we can check up on her. But Jack, she struck me as more or less off her rocker. Didn’t she tell you she fainted away because of the contrast between the idle rich – us, in other words – and the waifs and strays she was collecting for? It sounds downright cuckoo to me.’
‘That is, or would be, as loopy as a corkscrew,’ agreed Jack. ‘But I didn’t believe her. She certainly had a shock that day – that was real enough – but I didn’t believe her account of what had shocked her. It’d be interesting to see if we can find her, don’t you think?’
‘If you want to go looking for nutty flag-sellers, be my guest,’ said Bill tolerantly. ‘I want a warrant for the chantry.’
Eight
‘Mrs McAllister?’ said Miss Sharpe. ‘I don’t know, I’m sure.’ She was about as unlike her name as it was possible to be – a sagging, faded woman who looked, Jack thought, as if she could do with some fresh air and some good food.
She certainly wouldn’t find any fresh air in 46, Purbeck Terrace. The house was redolent with the odour of stale cooked cabbage, which seemed to kick the idea of good food into touch, too.
It was the following morning. A telephone call from Scotland Yard to the Charing Cross hospital had established Mrs Joan McAllister’s address as 46, Purbeck Terrace, Paddington, and Jack, with Bill Rackham’s rather amused blessing, had taken himself off to investigate.
46, Purbeck Terrace was a boarding house. At one time it had evidently been a prosperous Victorian residence, but age, grime and changes in fashion had taken their toll. The down-at-heel nature of the house took him by surprise. Not that he’d thought Mrs McAllister was particularly affluent, but she was a flag-seller, after all, and collecting for charity was, in his experience, an occupation limited to the middle-classes.
The landlady, Mrs Kiddle, after bearing up under her disappointment that Jack did not require a room, informed him that Mrs McAllister had left them. Was it a fortnight ago? No, wait, she told a lie. It was more like three weeks since. No, she didn’t know Mrs McAllister’s present address, but if he’d like to speak to Miss Sharpe – if Mrs McAllister had been friendly with anyone, it was Miss Sharpe – she might know where she’d got to.
Mrs Kiddle showed him into a room she referred to as the Residents’ Lounge. It didn’t invite lounging. It had a worn carpet on which the pattern was still just about discernable, and the sofa and armchairs had seen better days. Lots of better days. Three stuffed birds under a glass dome and a dusty aspidistra in a streakily polished brass pot on a stand added to the general funereal joy.
After a few minutes, a woman, patting an untidy bird’s nest of grey hair into position, came in. To say she fitted her surroundings was unkind but true.
‘Miss Sharpe?’ asked Jack, standing up. ‘I wondered if you’d be able to help me.’
‘I don’t know, I’m sure,’ said Miss Sharpe, in a voice about as faded as the carpet, perching on the edge of one of the shabby chairs. ‘Mrs Kiddle said you were looking for Mrs McAllister. She’s your aunt, I believe.’
Jack had adopted this innocent deception to explain his interest in Mrs McAllister. ‘Yes, that’s right. My Aunt Joan. I haven’t seen her for a long time.’
‘Are you from America?’ asked Miss Sharpe.
‘I beg your pardon?’ said Jack, pausing as he sat down. This was unexpected, to say the least.
‘I wondered if you were from America. I thought you might be.’ She put her head to one side. ‘You look foreign, and I know they’ve got a lot of foreigners in America. And gangsters and millionaires and so on,’ she added, regarding Jack with vague hopefulness.
‘No, I’m not from America,’ said Jack, taken aback. ‘Or a gangster or a millionaire, come to that. I’m not even foreign.’
‘No?’ said Miss Sharpe. Jack felt he had let Miss Sharpe down in some obscure way. ‘Mrs McAllister had lived in America. I thought you might be American.’
So that’s what Mrs McAllister’s accent had been! Not pure American, but an English accent with American inflections.
‘I suppose,’ she said, looking at him dubiously, ‘that you could call Americans foreigners, but they’re not foreign foreigners, if you see what I mean? I know they express themselves oddly on occasion, but at least they do speak English.’
Having thus admitted kinship with one hundred and ten million people, Miss Sharpe moved on. ‘I know Mrs McAllister’s been back a few years now and I wondered if that’s why you hadn’t seen her for a while.’
Once again, Jack felt he’d let Miss Sharpe down. ‘Because I’ve been in America, you mean? Sorry, that’s not the reason.’
‘She used to talk about America,’ she said sadly, and heaved a wistful sigh. ‘How good it was over there, how big the shops were and how there were lifts in all of them, so you didn’t have to bother with stairs, which must be such a boon to those who are getting on in years. Even those of us who aren’t exactly old find stairs such a sad trial. I sometimes,’ she added with an air of resigned martyrdom, ‘get positively breathless when faced with a flight of stairs, with such shooting pains in my legs, you wouldn’t believe. Mrs McAllister was most sympathetic.’
‘That was very nice of her,’ said Jack.
‘I feel it in my knees, most of all, but it goes all the way up to my hips,’ she said with a sort of weary persistence. ‘Mrs McAllister said that in America I wouldn’t notice I had legs. Not notice! I’m always aware of my legs. And my knees. I used to talk to Mrs McAllister about my legs all the time.’
She looked at him hopefully, obviously willing to continue the discussion, but Jack had no intention of getting sidelined by Miss Sharpe’s legs. Miss Sharpe, he felt, could quite happily allow her legs to dominate any conversation. Instead he hazarded a guess. He’d better show some sort of knowledge of Aunt Joan.
‘She loved New York, didn’t she?’
‘Oh, yes,’ said Miss Sharpe, thankfully dropping the legs motif. ‘She talked a lot about New York. She
lived in a lovely house, near a big park.’ She frowned. ‘Now, where was it?’
‘Central Park?’ asked Jack, guessing wildly.
Miss Sharpe’s face cleared. ‘That’s it! I couldn’t remember for the moment.’
Jack decided to try another guess. From his two meetings with Mrs McAllister, to say nothing of the shabbiness of Purbeck Terrace, it seemed unlikely she would own or rent ‘a lovely house’ near Central Park. There was, he thought, only one way she could live there. ‘She enjoyed her time in service, didn’t she?’
Miss Sharpe looked worried. ‘In service?’ She leaned forward confidentially. ‘Well, yes, she did, but she didn’t like people to know she’d been in service. I didn’t mind, but there are some who would. People are so prejudiced, aren’t they? She wouldn’t have liked it to have got about. She never was in service here, you understand, only in America, and that’s not the same, is it? It’s different in America, I daresay. Of course, when she got married – her husband would be your Uncle Michael, wouldn’t he? – she had to give it up. Not that she minded, as he did quite well for himself, didn’t he?’
‘So I believe.’ Jack decided to draw another bow at a venture. ‘Was he in grocery?’
From Miss Sharpe’s expression it was clear that Uncle Michael wasn’t a grocer.
‘Or was that my Uncle Arnold?’ he mused out loud. ‘Or my Uncle Stephen?’
‘He was a barber, I believe.’
Now that was something he wouldn’t have guessed.
‘Of course! Hair today, gone tomorrow, as you might say,’ said Jack with a disarming smile.
Miss Sharpe tittered. ‘That’s exactly what your Aunt Joan used to say! She did use to make me laugh.’ She looked upon him kindly. ‘I can see you’ve got her sense of humour.’
Blimey, had he? Remembering Mrs McAllister, it wasn’t the best compliment he’d ever received, but it was something. ‘As a matter of fact, I never met Uncle Michael,’ he said, truthfully enough.
After the Exhibition: A Jack Haldean 1920s Mystery (A Jack Haldean Mystery) Page 13