“I see …”
Costain puffed his pipe thoughtfully. He felt at home with Littlejohn and hoped they’d get about a lot together.
The road outside was bathed in sunshine, but the heavy window curtains were half drawn to prevent the light from fading the carpet. So the room was in a sort of semi-twilight.
“Were there any more before this youngster who took to drink?”
“Always somebody hangin’ round, as I said. Cars and motor bikes, too. Like a bloomin’ motor show round Apple Tree. And her that coy and haughty with ’em. I could have slapped her myself sometimes.”
“Who might have been the special favourites and likely to take her attachment to Free badly?”
“I can’t think any as would be likely to murder the lucky man. Except maybe young Tim if he were roaring drunk and didn’t know what he was at.”
“All the same, just mention a few likely names.”
“Well … Johnny Hunter, Free’s chum at college, was doing a bit of steady courtin’ with Laura before Free cut him out. He soon seemed to get over it, though. Took to one of the other girls o’ the village. Jessie Fairfield.”
“On the rebound, would you say?”
“Maybe.”
“Was he likely to be still fond of Laura?”
“I wouldn’t be surprised. Him and young Free was cold with one another after it. In fact, Hunter kicked up a scene with Laura. Her father had to put him off the premises …”
“H’m.”
Littlejohn looked round the room thoughtfully. You could see your own reflection in the furniture. There was a picture of a wedding group over the fireplace. It was difficult to pick out Costain as the bridegroom. He had been full-faced and ruddy then … A clock on the mantelpiece, with a thing like a brass cheese revolving on the end of a piece of wire instead of a pendulum, struck five, and as if that were a signal, Mrs. Costain entered with a tea-tray.
The constable introduced her to Littlejohn. She smiled hesitated, shook hands, poured out two cups of tea, offered the two men buttered scones and then left them. Littlejohn put down her speedy retreat to shyness, but Costain knew that she’d got the huff because there had been smoking in her best room. He’d get the rounds of the kitchen for this!
“We’d perhaps better run round to Apple Tree Farm,” said Littlejohn when they’d finished their tea. “By the way, what were you saying about the money motive, Costain?”
“Oh … Laura’s mother married again, that’s all. Fellow o’ the name of Spry. Laura’s money’s in trust and her mother gets the income till the girl’s twenty-five or marries, whichever’s first.”
“And you think there’s a possibility that the murder might be due to the likelihood of her marrying Free?”
“Maybe. You never know.”
“We must find that out.”
They left for the farm.
A small village. One long street and a lot of pretty side lanes, with a few cottages with good gardens along them. The main road to Melchester, well macadamed, held a few shops and the pub. In gardens and fields beyond stood evenly-spaced bungalows and large houses set in well-kept grounds.
Typically old English, the place was ancient and intact just near the church and ruined all round its borders by indiscriminate vulgar building.
The sun was still shining brightly and the sky was wonderfully clear. There were plenty of cars on the move and parked in the street. Women shopping or gossiping, children playing, maids wheeling out perambulators or leading youngsters by the hand …
Costain, saluting passers-by gravely, led the way. They passed a confectioner’s shop crammed to the door with women and children. Outside, a placard: Ice Cream. And another: No Parking in Front of the Shop. There was a long, anxious queue at the greengrocer’s, too. Grape-fruit had just arrived.
They skirted a field full of fine-looking Friesian cattle. Then, Apple Tree Farm. As Costain opened the gate a sheep-dog began to bark and snarl.
“Geracher!” growled Costain, and the dog fled into his kennel.
They were busy milking. The motor of the milking machine purred and throbbed. From inside the cowsheds came the rattle of buckets, the munching and soft mooing of cattle.
P.C. Costain eyed the lot with the air of an expert. More up-to-date than his dad’s place at Ballaugh, but they could keep their new-fangled contraptions and their prize herds.
A man was standing watching operations. Tall, bony, with a strong, knotted frame and a face tanned and lined by exposure to all weathers. He had a ragged moustache and a head of thick, coarse, Vandyke-brown hair. His eyes were brown, too, and shifty. He wore riding-breeches and a tweed jacket, and carried a stick. He turned sharply as footsteps approached.
“Hullo, Joe.”
“Hullo, Mr. Spry. This is Inspector Littlejohn, from Scotland Yard; here on the Free case.”
Spry offered his hand. The muscles of the fingers were so hard and strong that he couldn’t grip properly.
“Is Miss Laura in?”
“Yes. Indoors with her mother. Had a bad shock and says she can’t face folks yet. Better go in the house if you want her.”
A land-girl manipulating the milking machine seemed to exasperate Spry.
“Finish ’er off by hand, dammit. How many more times have I to tell ye? There’ll be close on half a pint left in her bag.”
Ignoring the visitors, he rushed to the scene of operations and started milking the cow himself, squeezing the last drops of milk left by the machine from her udders.
The girl looked rebellious at this rebuke before strangers, and flounced off.
“Where are you goin’?”
The policemen left them quarrelling.
“Terribly bad-tempered and jumpy is Spry, sir.”
Five minutes later the Inspector and Costain were in the farmhouse.
Laura was twenty-three, they said. All the blinds of the farm were drawn in mourning, but by the light percolating into the room you could see she was a beauty. The kind that would turn men’s heads.
They had exchanged greetings, introductions and condolences, and were seated in the best room. It wasn’t like a farm interior at all. Modern furniture, good carpets, electric light with expensive fittings. Quite elegant and comfortable. Evidently Laura had taken a free hand in fitting-up the place.
Laura drew back the curtains to let in the light.
Mrs. Spry remained with them. A small, chubby woman with greying dark hair, red cheeks and bright hazel eyes. She was trying desperately to look full of sorrow at the bereavement of her daughter, but cheerfulness kept supervening and she smiled naturally when she forgot the occasion. You could see a resemblance to Laura in her face.
Laura Cruft was dressed in a green linen frock which outlined her rounded figure. She had about her an athletic sensual sinuosity, very disturbing, no doubt, to the susceptible.
A pale, oval face with a flawless complexion; difficult to know where nature ended and art began in the matter of colouring. The eyes were dark and liquid; the hair almost black with a high sheen, like that on a rook’s feathers at mating-time, and very becomingly curled close to her head.
Her mouth was small and she had used her lipstick carefully. She had the subtle smile and the air of complete self-possession of a woman who knows she is beautiful and well able to get her own way most of the time.
“We’ve called about Ronald Free,” said Littlejohn.
Costain looked uncomfortable, sitting on the edge of a chair as if he were at home, with his helmet on the floor beside him.
Mrs. Spry glanced at her daughter as though expecting a scene. But Laura had herself well in hand. Her pink, chubby, well-manicured hands were steady and she showed no trace of tears. Littlejohn observed the shadows under her eyes and wondered whether or not it were mascara.
Hard as nails, he thought.
“You and Mr. Free were … er …”
“Engaged, Inspector. We’d just become engaged before this awful thing happened.”<
br />
“So nobody knew?”
“How could they? We’d not spoken to a soul about it.”
There was no break in her voice; no trace of grief. She might have been rehearsing a play which needed no emotion till dress rehearsal night.
“Have you been to see Ronald’s people?”
“Yes. But I left almost at once. They were far too upset to bother with questions.”
“I feel the same. But I’m anxious to help all I can to find out who did this.”
There was a note of impatience in Laura’s voice. Littlejohn remembered that the Free family were not enamoured of their son’s affair with her. They’d like her even less now.
“What was Ronald like?”
She went and brought a handbag and took out a snapshot taken with an amateur camera.
A tall, well-built young fellow, obviously posing with some amusement, lolling on the door of the cowshed of Apple Tree Farm. A shock of unruly light hair, an open-necked shirt and flannel trousers. The features were distorted by the broad grin. He looked very pleased with himself.
“There he is. He’d just got a job at a public school. He was going to get settled down and then we were to be married.”
“You met at Melchester University?”
“Oh, no. We’ve known each other since we were kids. We both lived in the village, you know. We got better acquainted at the University.”
“Are you still there?”
“No. I got my degree and left last term.”
“Going to take up teaching?”
“No. Not that. I’m at home till I can make up my mind what to do. If this hadn’t happened probably I’d have stayed at home until we got married. Now … I don’t know what I’ll do.”
“And now will you tell me exactly what happened last night, please?”
“We went to the pictures at Melchester. Walked there and came back by bus. Ronnie came indoors to have a word with mother, then I was seeing him to the gate …”
“What time did you leave the house?”
“It was striking nine-thirty.”
“And then?”
“Well, suddenly, Ronald asked me to marry him.”
“You agreed right away?”
For the first time she showed some animation. Her cheeks flushed. Littlejohn felt she was angry at the thought that she’d jumped at the offer.
“I’d more or less expected it. He’d tried several times to say something and then … well … lost his nerve or …”
The answer was probably that his people objected, but she didn’t say it.
“So you became engaged?”
“Yes. He seemed frightfully keen about getting engaged and married as soon as we could. We stood talking about it and then he left, saying he’d see me to-morrow.”
“You were together in the garden, then, about a quarter of an hour?”
“Somewhere about that.”
“Did you hear anybody else about? Prowling round, or anything. I mean, could anyone have overheard what you were saying?”
“No. We weren’t exactly shouting it from the housetop. We were almost whispering.”
“And you left him in the garden?”
“Yes. He went down the path to the gate and I went straight indoors.”
Mrs. Spry kept looking at her daughter. She seemed as surprised as Littlejohn at Laura’s self-possession. They might have been investigating a petty theft instead of a murder.
“Could I get you anything? A cup of tea, Inspector, or a glass of beer?” said Mrs. Spry, more from want of something to say than anything else.
“No, thank you, Mrs. Spry. We must be going now. But first, I want to ask Miss Laura a rather pointed question. You needn’t answer if you don’t want, but it would help.”
“Please don’t hesitate, Inspector. I’m anxious to do all I can.”
“Had Ronald Free any rival who might have taken your attachment badly?”
Mrs. Spry caught her breath and looked wide-eyed first at Laura, then at Littlejohn.
“No,” said the girl.
And that was that.
“But you had several boy friends before him?”
She didn’t answer, but smiled a queer smile. Self-satisfied, almost coy.
Outside, Spry was shouting about the yard. Still finding fault with the land girls. Now, apparently, they were taking too long over their cups of tea.
The view from the window was lovely. The ground rose steadily to a large wood, glowing with all the tints of autumn. The first gale would bring down most of the leaves, but how they hung still and expectant, a mass of red and gold.
“It’s terrible!”
Mrs. Spry was expressing on behalf of herself and Laura their sentiments about the murder.
Laura said nothing. She was staring through the window as though waiting for someone.
Spry was still bellowing about the farmyard. Something about the milk-cooler now.
“Excuse me, I must go out to see what my husband wants. Are you …?”
“We must be going, thank you, Mrs. Spry.”
Costain picked up his helmet and put it on and they all went out together.
4.
THE RIVAL CAMP
“You are thought here to be the most senseless and fit man for the constable of the watch; therefore bear you the lantern. This is your charge: you shall comprehend all vagrom men; you are to bid any man stand, in the prince’s name.”
“How if ’a will not stand?”
“Why then, take no note of him …”
MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING
P.C. WILLIAM BUTT of Ditchling Episcopi nursed in his bosom a burning jealousy of Joseph Costain. Only recently had their villages been amalgamated for patrol purposes. An outbreak of robberies had made it necessary for a constable to be on duty by night as well as day.
Butt was an enormous, red-faced man, heavy-footed and always in a sweat. People preferred the quiet, melancholy Costain to him, which was wormwood and gall to Butt, who wanted to earn his stripes first.
On the night of the murder, there was quite a domestic scene in the Ditchling police house. Mrs. Butt was still up and about in spite of the late hour. She received without enthusiasm the partridges which the gods had flung into her husband’s arms.
“He’s in another of his do’s,” she said right away to her husband when he entered, full of murder, partridges and jealousy for his lucky colleague at Ravelstone.
“Why, it’s not cold,” replied the bobby, forgetting the many things he had on his mind and entering into the dialogue. He then plonked himself down heavily and began to demolish a pork pie and a bottle of beer which were waiting for him.
“Well … He’s at it again, cold or no cold. Shoutin’ the place down for ham … and tea and jelly. As if he didn’t get enough food! I won’t stand it … He’ll ’ave to go to the workhouse or else I’ll go out ’o me mind …”
P.C. Butt took a large mouthful of beer to swill down his pie and clear a way for speech.
“’Ow many times have I to tell yer, mother? It’s not the ’am what you eat that he’s botherin’ about … It’s the ’am in the Bible …”
“Ham! My son, Ham …”
Loud shouts from the upper room interrupted Butt’s heavy exposition.
Mr. Nehemiah Butt, aged eight-four, father of William, was on the warpath. Cold weather always gave him one of his bad bouts. Hunger, lack of clothes on his bed and the effects of low temperatures on his brain periodically gave him the idea that he was Noah. Thereupon, he imagined that his son Charlie, who lived in distant parts as a matter of policy and who refused to give the old fellow house room, was Ham and had taken away all his clothes and publicly mocked him. P.C. Butt, in the role of Shem, received his perpetual blessings.
In his lucid hours, Old Butt talked about P.C. William behind his back, poured scorn on his constabulary acumen, and accused him of harbouring him merely for the money he expected under his Will. In truth, Nehemiah hadn’t a bean exce
pt his old-age pension and a life policy for £200, without profits, which, owing to his persistent and impecunious survival, had already cost William £250 in premiums.
Old man Butt had once been a Roman Catholic and until the imminent arrival of the distant Charlie had forced him hastily to lead the late Mrs. Nehemiah to the altar, he had toyed with the idea of entering the priesthood. He had, therefore, a smattering of ecclesiastical Latin, which his subsequent conversion to the faith of the Seventh Day Resters, who attended chapel all week and stayed in bed all day on Sundays, had not driven from his system.
He occupied a large garret at the top of the house and had filled his lair from floor to ceiling, cram-jam, with furniture inherited from one after another of his three sisters and seven brothers who had predeceased him.
P.C. Butt found his sire sitting up in bed, barricaded in by easy chairs, sideboards, commodes, whatnots and marble-topped washstands. The bobby had to perform a series of knights’ and bishops’ moves and clamber over a row of Gladstone bags, also legacies from the brothers Butt and each bearing the initials of the deceased owner. P.B., J.H.B., H.B., M.B., F.X.B., and so on … Like a graveyard.
“Benedicte! Deducant te angeli,” said Old Butt. His face was covered in a froth of snow-white beard, which reminded you of the milk boiling over, and his thin, silky, grey hair stood on end. His cheeks were flushed with delirium and enthusiasm. He looked like one of the prophets of old depicted by Gustave Dorè.
“Jelly?” puffed P.C. Butt.
“Ham! Bring my son Ham that I may curse him. He has uncovered me and mocked me …”
“Get to sleep, father; ’ere, I’ll put this rug over your feet.”
P.C. Butt in desperation picked up a mat from a pile of carpets and squares, also willed to Old Butt by his departed relatives, and flung it across his parent’s bed. It was a praying-mat brought by Francis-Xavier Butt from Ramoth-Gilead and seemed to do the trick.
“Benedicte!” said the old man and fell asleep right away.
Outrage on Gallows Hill Page 3