The unofficial mourners from the University had separated themselves from those invited to the funeral-spread and some caught the bus back. Others turned into the pub, a number of them prancing about the place like a lot of horses gone mad. One was behind the bar working the pumps and cuddling Edna.
“Two bottled beers …”
“Two tankards of hogwash, Hebe, my darling …”
“What’s your night off, Edna, my pet …?”
They invaded the room where Littlejohn and Blaize were standing. Blaize greeted them curtly. Some of them looked down their noses at him; others were jocular.
“Better get in the bar, Blaize, and defend Edna’s virtue. You ought to be good at that!”
“Shut up!”
“Come on, Inspector, I’ll show you the dining-room. Lunch’ll be ready in a brace of shakes.”
The dining-room was small and, as yet, there was nobody there. Outside, in a car-park at the back of the pub, a few men who had come in cars to the funeral were shunting them here and there, manoeuvring to get through the narrow gate into the road.
“You’ll understand, Inspector, I’m not doubting your skill as a detective. Oh, no. But you don’t want to be here for the rest of your life, do you? And that’s what you look like being. There are so many trails.”
Blaize had filled up his tankard and was getting more and more fuddled.
“What do you mean, Mr. Blaize?”
“I daresay you’re wonderin’ what I’m gettin’ at. You may even think I killed Free. Well, forget it. I was here, indoors, entertainin’ my father’s better-class guests, addin’ tone to the place by my distinguished presence, sir. And a dozen or more people’ll bear out what I’m tellin’ you.”
“Such as …?”
“Why bother with a list of names. You’ll be in the place tonight. Ask the first chap you meet where I was when Free was garotted. Here, right here, he’ll tell you, so help him God.”
“What about these other trails you’re talking of?”
“Edna, bring me a packet of Gold Flake from the bar, that’s a good girl. Never mind what they want … Bring me the cigarettes, damn you! We were sayin’?”
“Trails … the many trails, Mr. Blaize.”
“Oh, yes, the trails. Well, they tell me Free and the lovely Laura had just plighted their troth, whatever that may mean. Bang went the chances of half-a-dozen chaps who were mad about her. For the time bein’, I mean. For the lovely Laura made a habit of makin’ and breakin’ engagements. Pie crusts, as you might say.”
“And who might the chaps have been?”
“Professor Lever, for example. Elderly gent hearin’ the sound of autumn violins; in other words, gettin’ old and feeling the need of renewin’ his youth by fondlin’ Laura. Ask anybody. The old boy was nuts on her.”
“I heard she was simply going to be his secretary.”
“Secretary! That’s a good one, sir. Don’t make me laugh. No, a lifetime with the formidable Clarice and then … snap, he cuts the painter …”
“You’ve got an imagination, I must say.”
A small brass band passed in the road, followed by a procession of clowns, tightrope-walkers, acrobats, ponies, a camel and an elephant. A circus from Melchester parading the locality in search of an audience.
The students rushed out, halted the procession and brought the performers in for a drink. Clowns’ hats, turbans, toppers, bobbed around the bar. Two undergraduates were climbing on the elephant’s back and one was feeding the camel with potato crisps. In the bar parlour the spider-lady was showing an admiring audience how she did it. The noise was terrific.
Nobody seemed grief-stricken at the loss of Free.
“Out of sight, out of mind,” hiccupped Blaize, now properly tight. “I guess Laura feels the same. Probably huntin’ a new lover …”
Littlejohn, thoroughly disgusted, went off in search of his dinner. Ronald Free’s friends seemed all to have gone, leaving behind a noisy residue out for a lark.
Suddenly there was a silence in the place, as though a ghost or something had walked in.
“I should just think so,” crackled a sarcastic voice. “I thought you were here attending a funeral. It seems I’m mistaken. It’s a circus. Where’s Blaize?”
“Upstairs, sir,” answered the subdued barmaid.
“Get him immediately.”
Blaize, the elder, a small, dark man with a paunch like a barrel and a large, dark moustache and obsequious manner, descended the stairs with remarkable agility. He came down like an indiarubber ball, bouncing step by step.
“Yes, Professor.”
“Turn out this rabble at once!”
They didn’t need telling twice, but melted away into the street, taking their circus pals with them.
Tall, dark, deep-eyed, the newcomer plucked at his loose, heavy lips, glared at the landlord and, turning on his heel, left the place. With his heavy nose, saturnine expression, bent shoulders and long arms and legs, he looked like Mephistopheles togged-up in tweeds of an old-fashioned cut and a black slouch hat.
“Who’s the newcomer?” asked Littlejohn.
“Professor D’Arcy Lever,” replied the landlord, crestfallen at his implied lack of discipline in his pub and wondering how to appease the indignant don now marching in dudgeon down the road.
9.
THE FURIOUS CRIMINOLOGIST
“Your face, my thane, is as a book where men may read strange matters.”
MACBETH
AFTER lunch, Littlejohn jotted it all down on paper, just to clear his mind a bit.
Ronald Free.—Just engaged to Laura Cruft. Friendly with a girl or two before. Said by Blaize to be a bit of a bounder. Stole his pal’s girl in his absence. Affair (?) with Muriel Paget.
Johnny Hunter.—Friendly with Free until Free stole his girl. Took it badly and then went off with another girl, Jessie Fairfield.
Professor Lever.—Very friendly with Laura Cruft until she and Free became lovers. Apparently wanted Laura to be his secretary.
Spry.—Benefits through wife from Laura’s trust money until she gets married. Ill-tempered and very jumpy at present.
Littlejohn looked at his list and shook his head. A motley crew. Finally he added the name of Tim Blaize. Very bitter about Free, Hunter and Laura. Drinking heavily. Gives alibi for night of murder.
Littlejohn felt bored. Whether it was the heavy lunch, the mix-up of so many young people in this sordid affair, or the gloom hanging about the inn, he couldn’t quite decide. Anyhow, it looked like being a very unpleasant job whichever way it turned.
Costain’s melancholy face appeared round the door.
“Come in, Costain. Draw up to the fire. It’s a bit chilly.”
The constable made his report in a despondent voice.
All the village seemed to have heard Butt’s boast that he’d soon lay the murderer by the heels on the strength of the evidence he’d accumulated. Every possible suspect had learned it, to say nothing of anybody else.
“I’ve a call or two to make, Costain. Meanwhile, I’d like you to call at Melchester Hospital again and see how Butt’s getting on. Ask him what was in the report which was stolen from his pocket when he was attacked. I think it was all about you and your misdeeds with the partridges.”
Costain blushed and passed his tongue nervously over his lips. Would he ever live it down?
“And find out, too, if anybody else knew what was in the document, will you?”
“Yes, sir. I’ll be gettin’ right along, then.”
Old Butt, more pugnacious than ever, had just finished another nasty note to his son in the neighbouring ward.
“… If you go on like this you will finish up ignominously like your Uncle Gus did … Serve you right … Incompeatent … Sic trasit inglorious…”
Butt’s Uncle Gus had been a journeyman plumber who specialised on heating systems but hated water. He always arrived drunk to deal with burst pipes. Eventually he ran away to America with
his boss’s wife, leaving him with three children and swearing to swing for him one day. Uncle Gus might have become a millionaire in his new retreat for anything old Butt knew!
The strain of writing this final letter must have taxed the old man’s energies so much that he died in his sleep an hour later. Thus Costain found P.C. Butt very low in spirits.
Littlejohn paused at the gate of the Pagets’ bungalow. The maid was there talking to the postman and signing for a registered package.
“Is Mrs. Paget in?”
The girl hesitated, torn between her gossip and dealing with the visitor.
“Yes, I think so. There’s somebody with her. Just a minute.”
The postman was a young fellow with a stiff leg, and seemed to be having a good time with the pretty servant, whose cheeks were flushed with pleasure at something he’d probably just said.
“All right … don’t bother. I’ll find my way.”
“But … Here, wait a minute …”
But Littlejohn was over the threshold and in the hall. The look in the maid’s eye told him something interesting might be afoot.
“Let him be,” said the postman. “When’s your half-day, did you say?”
She didn’t need much persuading to forget the Inspector.
A gruff voice was rumbling angrily inside one of the rooms, the door of which was closed.
“But let me explain …” said a woman’s voice, shrill with emotion.
“No need to explain nothin’. Them letters tell all that’s got to be said. Best burn ’em at once. I won’t ’ave no scandal on my boy’s name.”
Littlejohn knocked on the door.
The voices ceased. Words seemed to freeze on the lips of the parties in the room.
A pause, full of suspense, and then the handle rattled. A slim, pretty woman, perhaps a little over thirty and with straight, bobbed, straw-coloured hair, opened the door. She was wearing flannel slacks and a sky-blue jumper, which matched the colour of her eyes. Her hair reminded Littlejohn of a page-boy at a pageant.
“Yes?”
“My name’s Inspector Littlejohn, madam. May I have a word with you?”
“I’m engaged at the moment …”
“Don’t bother about me. I’m goin’.”
It was Mr. Free, Ronald’s father, dressed in his shabby working clothes and holding his old bowler hat. His face was red with indignation. Littlejohn had evidently interrupted a stormy session.
Nothing more was said. Free stumped from the room without a word of parting, leaving scattered on the table what he had evidently brought with him, a bundle of letters. One of them had been withdrawn and lay open. Free must have been flinging its contents in Mrs. Paget’s face when Littlejohn intruded. The envelope was beside it … A bold, flowing, feminine hand … Ronald Free, Esq., G.P.O. Melchester.
So that was it. Old Free had been going through his son’s belongings and come across letters from Muriel to his son. They had evidently given the show away concerning past relations between the parties.
Muriel Paget stuck it out very well. She gathered up the bundle and the loose letter and boldly returned Littlejohn’s look. Then she flung the odd letter on the table.
“Read it! Read it! That’s what your dying to do. Go on. I don’t care. I loved him and he’s dead … I suppose that solves the problem. He’s dead … He loved me, too … once …”
She said the last word very faintly.
Littlejohn felt sorry for her. She was pretty in a delicate, doll-like way. Little, straight, almost impudent nose, and pink cheeks as though gently dabbed with paint. And a very attractive way of doing her hair. Her husband spent a lot of time in London, they said. And when he was home, his typewriter going like mad, day and night, churning out thrillers.
First a mutual interest in French literature … A friendship … A flirtation … An affair.
She had flung the letter open right before Littlejohn.
My darling Ronnie,
How like a winter hath mine absence been. Did you forget you were to meet me …?
Littlejohn pushed the letter back with his forefinger. He couldn’t help just catching the beginning as he did so.
Ronald Free had tired. It was easy to see that Muriel, eager, impulsively flinging all she had to give at Free, would stand little chance against the scheming, self-possessed Laura, if the latter made up her mind to it.
Muriel Paget lit a cigarette. She made one or two attempts to get the end of it in the flame of the match, her hands were trembling so much.
“What do you want?”
“You were a friend of Ronald Free, Mrs. Paget?”
She laughed mirthlessly.
“You ask that after the scene you’ve just witnessed. That was Ronald’s father, bringing back the letters I’d written to his son and accusing me of being a wanton … Friend, indeed!”
She helped herself to a drink from a bottle on the sideboard. Whisky, and a liberal dose of it, too.
Littlejohn looked round. The room was cosily furnished in antique oak. Comfortable settees and armchairs, refectory table and tasteful dining chairs. Good pictures on the walls, too. There must be money in the thriller game.
“Well. What do you want to know? Let’s get it over.”
“Knowing Free, would you say he’d any enemies who might have done this thing?”
She gathered up the letters, started taking each from its envelope and burning them in the fire blazing in the brick grate.
“Me? Are you thinking I did it? Well, I didn’t … I couldn’t have done it … I … I … Oh, damn!”
She was on the verge of tears and passed it off by taking another liberal dose of whisky. Her nerves were evidently all to pieces.
Littlejohn looked at her hands as she handled the bottle and glass. Small, white, delicate. Difficult to believe them busy with a piece of binder twine.
Outside, the maid was still enjoying herself with the postman. A man in an old navy blue suit and a yachting cap on his head passed and greeted them, but they were too busy with their own affairs even to notice him.
“Where were you at the time of the crime, Mrs. Paget? Between nine and ten on Tuesday last?”
Muriel Paget turned white. Only her lipstick remained the same tint on her mouth, throwing the rest of her face into more ghastly pallor.
“I was out …”
“Where?”
“Walking …”
“Alone?”
“Yes.”
“ In what direction?”
“Along the Melchester Road and back. I didn’t go anywhere near Gallows Hill, Inspector. I swear I didn’t.”
“It was a dark night to be knocking around alone, wasn’t it?”
“Yes. I felt I couldn’t stay indoors a minute longer. My husband had been working all night on his new book. He couldn’t bear to be disturbed when he was creating, as he called it sarcastically.”
“So you left him indoors and went off on your own?”
“Yes. But I swear I didn’t go anywhere near the Hill.”
“Very well, madam.”
A busy little woman had stopped by the postman and seemed to be asking him for letters. He wasn’t pleased at all about being disturbed and the pretty maid, with a toss of her head, turned her back and started to chase off two hens which had escaped from the adjacent pen and were scratching up the flower beds.
Inside, there was silence save for the tick of the heavy case clock in one corner of the room. With inner rumblings it gathered itself together and chimed three-quarters.
“You’ve admitted that you and Ronald Free were on very intimate terms, madam. Your relations cooled off?”
“His did … He found Laura Cruft more to his liking apparently. It wasn’t to be wondered at … After all, I’m ten years older than he was.”
She said it with the utmost bitterness, and the thin line of her mouth grew tighter and quivered.
“Forgive the next question, but had there been others before the t
wo of you?”
“Yes. He told me, when I taxed him with it, that he’d only been learning how to love from them. The love he gave me was its ’last perfect blooming.’ A quotation from some French poet or other; Ronald was always quoting from French poets.”
She had drunk too much whisky. Of that Littlejohn was sure. Otherwise, she would not be pouring out her heart in this fashion.
“Who were these other women?”
“I don’t know …”
“Come, come, Mrs. Paget!”
“I don’t know, I tell you. Leave me alone, for God’s sake!”
She made for the bottle on the sideboard again.
“I wouldn’t have any more of that if I were you, Mrs. Paget. You’ll make yourself ill.”
“I’ll please myself. What’s it got to do with you?”
“Shall we change the subject. Just one or two more questions, then I’ll leave you.”
She said nothing. She had taken up a pointed manicure file and was viciously jabbing it into a blotter on the desk by which she was standing.
“As far as you know, did your husband remain indoors all the time you were out that night?”
“Yes. Judging from the number of pages of manuscript he’d got through, he’d worked hard all the time I was away.”
“How did you know?”
“Oh, hell! Must we go on? He left his papers scattered on the desk and I gathered them together. I knew where he was when I left him. I do some secretarial work for him.”
“Did he know about your friendship with Free?”
“Thinking he might have murdered Ronald out of jealousy?”
“No. Will you answer, Mrs. Paget?”
“I guess he did. You can’t keep things like that dark here, with all the gossip that goes on. Probably some kind friend told him. I don’t know. He never mentioned it.”
“Are you and your husband on good terms?”
“If you mean are we still in love, no. We got over that long ago. If you mean are we good friends, yes. He’s kind and patient, as far as husbands go …”
“May I ask where your husband is now, Mrs. Paget?”
“He’s in London. He goes down for two or three days every week. Don’t ask me what he does there. I don’t know and I don’t mind. We each live our own lives these days.”
Outrage on Gallows Hill Page 8