Grave Mistake ra-30

by Ngaio Marsh

  The sergeant was taking his time. No whistle. The silence, of a countryside, breathed out its nocturnal preoccupations: stirrings in the hedgerow, far-distant traffic, the movements of small creatures going about their business in the night

  “Sst!”

  It was the sergeant, back in the gap up the hill. His helmet showed against Mrs. Black’s lighted window in Stile Lane. Alleyn climbed the bank and leant over the hurdle.

  “Artie is there,” breathed Sergeant McGuiness. “In his bidey-hole. Curled up. My Gawd, I nearly crawled in on top of him.”

  “Asleep?”

  “Sound.”

  “It doesn’t matter. Come back into the lane and lean into the hollow in the bank below the lay-by. Your head will be pretty much on a level with his. I simply want to check that he could, have seen what he said he saw and heard. Back you come.”

  The sergeant had gone. Alleyn slipped into the lane and walked up it, treading on the soft margin. Fox’s shadow still performed its gigantic ritual against the tree-tops.

  Alleyn turned left into Stile Lane and walked a little way up it. He was now quite close to Mrs. Black’s cottage. The light behind the window was out. He waited for a moment or two and then retraced his steps, walking, now, in the middle of the road. He wondered if Claude Carter had worn his crepe-soled shoes last night. He wondered, supposing Daft Artie woke and saw him, if he would repeat his eldritch shriek.

  Now he was almost opposite the lay-by. Not a hint of the sergeant, in blackest shadow under the hedge.

  Alleyn paused.

  It was as if an ironclad fist struck him on the jaw.

  iii

  He lay in the lane and felt grit against his face and pain and he heard a confusion of sounds. Disembodied voices shouted angrily.

  “Mr. Fox! Come down here. Mr. Fox.”

  He had been lifted and rested against a massive thigh. “I’m all right,” somebody said. He said it. “Where’s Fox? What happened?”

  “The bloody kid. He chucked a brick at you. Over my head. Gawd, I thought he’d done you, Mr. Alleyn,” said Sergeant McGuiness.

  “Where’s Fox?”

  “Here,” said Fox. His large concerned face blotted out the stars. He was breathing hard. “Here I am,” he said. “You’ll be all right.”

  A furious voice was roaring somewhere out on the hillside beyond the hedge. “Come back. You damned, bloody young murderer. Come back, till I have the hide off of you.” Footsteps thudded and retreated.

  “That’s Bruce,” said Alleyn, feeling his jaw. “Where did he spring from? The cottage?”

  “That’s right,” somebody said.

  Fox was saying: “Get cracking, Sarge. Sort it out. I’ll look after this!”

  More retreating footsteps at toe run.

  “Here, get me up. What hit me?”

  “Take it easy, Mr. Alleyn. Let me have a look. Caught you on the jaw. Might have broken it.”

  “You’re telling me. What did?” He struggled to his knees and then with Fox’s help to his feet. “Damn and blast!” he said. “Let me get to that bank while my head clears. What hit me?”

  “Half a brick. The boy must have woken up. Bruce and the sarge are chasing him.”

  Fox had propped him against the bank and was playing a torch on his face and dabbing it very gently with his handkerchief. “It’s bleeding,” he said.

  “Never mind that. Tell me what happened.”

  “It seems that when you got as far as here — almost in touching distance of the sarge — the boy must have woken up, seen you, dark and all though it is, picked up a half-brick from his fireplace and heaved it. It must have passed over the sarge’s head. Then he lit off.”

  “But, Bruce?”

  “Yes. Bruce. Bruce noticed the light in the graveyard and thought it might be vandals. There’s been trouble with them lately. Anyway, he came roaring down the hill and saw the boy in the act. How’s it feel now?”

  “Damn’ sore but I don’t think it’s broken. And the sergeant’s chasing Daft Artie?”

  “Him and Bruce.”

  “No good making a song and dance over it: the boy’s not responsible.”

  “It’s my bet they won’t catch him. For a start, they can’t see where they’re going.”

  “I wonder where his home is,” said Alleyn.

  “Bruce’ll know. It must,” said Fox, still examining Alleyn’s jaw, “have caught you on the flat. There’s a raw patch but no cut. We’ll have to get you to a doctor.”

  “No, we won’t,” Alleyn mumbled. “I’ll do all right. Fox, how much could he see from the lay-by? Enough to recognize me? Go and stand where I was, will you?”

  “Are you sure—?”

  “Yes. Go on.”

  Fox moved away. The light still glowed beyond the church. It was refracted faintly into the centre of the lane. Fox was an identifiable figure. Just.

  Alleyn said: “So we know Artie could have recognized Carter and I suppose, me. Damnation, look at this.”

  A window in the parsonage on the far side of the green shone out. Somebody opened it and was revealed as a silhouette. “Hullo!” said a cultivated voice. “Is anything the mattah?”

  The Vicar.

  “Nothing at all,” Alleyn managed. “A bit of skylarking in the lane. Some young chaps. We’ve sorted it out.”

  “Is that the police?” asked the Vicar plaintively.

  “That’s us,” Fox shouted. “Sorry you’ve been disturbed, sir.”

  “Nevah mind. Is there something going on behind the church? What’s that light?”

  “We’re just making sure there’s been no vandalism,” Alleyn improvised. It hurt abominably to raise his voice. “Everything’s in order.”

  By this time several more windows along the lane had been opened.

  “It’s quite all right, sir,” Fox said. “No trouble. A bunch of young chaps with too much on board.”

  “Get that bloody light out,” Alleyn muttered.

  Fox, using his own torch, crossed the lane. The lych-gate shrieked. He hurried up the steps and round the church.

  “You don’t think perhaps I should just pop down?” the Vicar asked doubtfully, after a considerable pause.

  “Not the slightest need. It’s all over,” Alleyn assured him. “They’ve bolted.”

  Windows began to close. The light behind the church went out.

  “Are you sure? Was it those lads from Great Quintern? I didn’t hear motor bikes.”

  “They hadn’t got bikes. Go back to bed, Vicar,” Alleyn urged him. “You’ll catch your death.”

  “No mattah. Goodnight then.”

  The window was closed. Alleyn watched Fox’s torchlight come bobbing round the church and down the steps. Voices sounded in the field beyond the hedge. Bruce and the sergeant. They came through the hurdle and down the bank.

  “I’m here,” Alleyn said. “Don’t walk into me.” The sergeant’s torchlight found him.

  “Are you all right, sir? ’E’s got clean away, I’m afraid. It was that bloody dark and there’s all them trees.”

  Bruce said: “I’ll have the hide off my fine laddie for this. What’s possessed the fule? He’s never showed violent before. By God, I’ll teach him a lesson he won’t forget.”

  “I suppose it was Artie?”

  “Nae doubt about it, sir.”

  “Where did you come from, Bruce?”

  It was as they had thought. Bruce had been keeping company with his shaken sister. She had gone to bed and he was about to return to Quintern Place. He looked out of the window and saw the glare of the lamp in the churchyard.

  “It gied me a shock,” he said, and with one of his occasional vivid remarks: “It was oncanny: as if I mysel’ was in two places at once. And then I thought it might be they vandals and up to no good. And I saw the shadow on the trees like mine had been. Digging. Like me. It fair turned my stomach, that.”

  “I can imagine.”

  “So I came the short cut down the
brae to the lane as fast as I could in the dark. I arrived at the hedge and his figure rose up clear against the glow behind the kirk. It was him all right. He stood there for a second and then he hurrled something and let out a bit screech as he did so. I shouted and he bolted along the hedge. The sergeant was in the lane, sir, with you in the light of his torch and flat on your back and him saying by God, the bugger’s got him and yelling for Mr. Fox. So I went roaring after the lad and not a hope in hell of catching him. He’s a wild crittur. You’d say he could see in the dark. Who’s to tell where he’s hiding?”

  “In his bed, most likely,” said the sergeant. “By this time.”

  “Aye, you may say so. His mother’s cottage is a wee piece further down the lane. Are you greatly injured, Superintendent? What was it he hurrled at you?”

  “Half a brick. No, I’m all right.”

  Bruce clicked his tongue busily. “He might have kilt you,” he said.

  “Leave it alone, Bruce. Don’t pitch into him when you see him. It wouldn’t do any good. I mean that.”

  “Well,” said Bruce dourly, “if you say so.”

  “I do say so.”

  Fox joined them, carrying his doused lamp and the shovel.

  Bruce, who wasted no ceremony with Fox, whom he seemed to regard as a sort of warrant-officer, asked him in scandalized tones what he thought he’d been doing up yon. “If you’ve been tampering with the grave,” he said furiously, “it’s tantamount to sacrilege and there’s no doubt in my mind there’s a law to deal with it. Now then, what was it? What where you doing with yon shovel?”

  “It was dumb show, Bruce,” Alleyn said wearily. “We were testing the boy’s story. Nothing’s been disturbed.”

  “I’ve a mind to look for mysel’.”

  “Go ahead, by all means if you want to. Have you got a torch?”

  “I’ll leave it,” Bruce said morosely. “I dinna like it but I’ll leave it.”

  “Goodnight to you, then. I think, Br’er Fox,” said Alleyn, “I’ll get in the car.”

  His face throbbed enormously and the ground seemed to shift under his feet. Fox piloted him to the car. The sergeant hovered.

  When they were under way Fox said he proposed to drive to the outpatients’ department at the nearest hospital. Alleyn said he would see Dr. Field-Innis in the morning, that he’d had routine tetanus injections and that if he couldn’t cope with a chuck under the chin the sooner he put in for retirement the better. He then fainted.

  He was out only for a short time, he thought, as they seemed not to have noticed. He said in as natural a manner as he could contrive that he felt sleepy, managed to fold his arms and lower his head, and did, in fact, drift into a sort of doze. He was vaguely aware of Fox giving what is known as “a shout” over the blower.

  Now they were at the station and so, surprisingly, was the district police surgeon.

  “There’s no concussion,” said the police surgeon, “and no breakage and your teeth are O.K. We’ll just clean you up and make you comfortable and send you home to bed, um?”

  “Too kind,” said Alleyn.

  “You’ll be reasonably comfortable tomorrow.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Don’t push it too far, though. Go easy.”

  “That,” said Mr. Fox in the background, “will be the day.”

  Alleyn grinned, which hurt. So did the cleaning up and dressing.

  “There we are!” said the police surgeon, jollily. “It’ll be a bit colourful for a day or two and there’s some swelling. You won’t have a permanent scar.”

  “Most reassuring. I’m sorry they knocked you up.”

  “What I’m there for, isn’t it? Quite an honour in this case. Good morning.”

  When he had gone Alleyn said: “Fox, you’re to get on to the Home Secretary.”

  “Me!” exclaimed the startled Fox. “Him? Not me!”

  “Not directly you, but get the Yard and the A.C. and ask for it to be laid on.”

  “What for, though, Mr. Alleyn? Lay on what?”

  “What do you think? The usual permit.”

  “You’re not,” said Fox, “—you can’t be — you’re not thinking of digging her up?”

  “Aren’t I? Can’t I? I am, do you know. Not,” said Alleyn, holding his pulsing jaw, “in quite the sense you mean but — digging her up, Br’er Fox. Yes.”

  Chapter 9: Graveyard (III)

  i

  When alleyn looked in the glass the following morning his face did not appear as awful as it felt. No doubt the full panoply of bruises was yet to develop. He shaved painfully round the dressing, took a bath and decided he was in more or less reasonable form to face the day.

  Fox came in to say their Assistant Commissioner was on the telephone. “If you can speak, that is.”

  Alleyn said: “Of course I can speak,” and found that it was best to do so with the minimum demand upon his lower jaw. He stifled the explosive grunt of pain that the effort cost him.

  The telephone was in the passage outside his room.

  “Rory?” said their A.C. “Yes. I want a word with you. What’s all this about an exhumation?”

  “It’s not precisely that, sir.”

  “What? I can’t catch what you say. You sound as if you were talking to your dentist.”

  Alleyn thought: “I daresay I shall be when there’s time for it,” but he merely replied that he was sorry and would try to do better.

  “I suppose it’s the clip on the jaw Fox talked about. Does it hurt?”

  “Not much,” Alleyn lied angrily.

  “Good. Who did it?”

  “The general idea is a naughty boy with a brick.”

  “About this exhumation that is not an exhumation. What am I to say to the H.S.? Confide in me, for Heaven’s sake.”

  Alleyn confided.

  “Sounds devilish far-fetched to me,” grumbled the A.C. “I hope you know what you’re about.”

  “So do I.”

  “You know what I think about hunches.”

  “If I may say so, you don’t mistrust them any more than I do, sir.”

  “All right, all right. We’ll go ahead, then. Tomorrow night, you suggest? Sorry you’ve had a knock. Take care of yourself.”

  “There is none that can compare,” Alleyn hummed in great discomfort. “With a tow, row bloody row to / Our A. Commissionaire. It’s on, Br’er Fox.”

  “This’ll set the village by the ears. What time?”

  “Late tomorrow night; We’ll be turning into tombstones ourselves if we keep up these capers.”

  “What’s our line with the populace?”

  “God knows. We hope they won’t notice. But what a hope!”

  “How about someone accidentally dropped a valuable in the open grave? Such as — er—”

  “What?”

  “I don’t know,” said Fox crossly. “A gold watch?”

  “When?” Alleyn asked. “And whose gold watch?”

  “Er. Well. Bruce’s? Anytime before the interment. I appreciate,” Fox confessed, “that it doesn’t sound too hot.”

  “Go on.”

  “I’m trying to picture it,” said Fox after a longish pause.

  “And how are you getting on?”

  “It’d be ludicrous.”

  “Perhaps the best way will be to keep quiet and if they do notice tell them nothing. ‘The police declined to comment.’ ”

  “The usual tarpaulin, et cetera,I suppose? I’ll lay it on, will I?”

  “Do. My face, by the way, had better be the result of a turn-up with a gang outside the village. Where’s the sergeant?”

  “Down at the ‘factory.’ He’s going to take a look at Daft Artie.”

  Alleyn began to walk about the room, found this jolted his jaw and sat on his bed. “Br’er Fox,”, hesaid, “there’s that child. Prunella. We can’t possibly risk her hearing of it by accident.”

  “The whole story?”

  “Upon my soul,” Alleyn said after
a long pause, “I’m not at all sure I won’t have recourse to your preposterous golden watch, or its equivalent. Look, I’ll drop you in the village and get you to call on the Vicar and tell him.”

  “Some tarradiddle? Or what?” Fox asked.

  “The truth but not the whole truth about what we hope to find. Hope!” said Alleyn distastefully. “What a word!”

  “I see what you mean. Without wishing to pester—” Fox began. To his surprise and gratification Alleyn gave him a smack on the shoulder.

  “All right, fuss-pot,” he said, “fat-faced but fit as a flea, that’s me. Come on.”

  So he drove Fox to the parsonage and continued up Long Lane, passing the gap in the hedge. He looked up at the church and saw three small boys and two women come round from behind the chancel end. There was something self-conscious about the manner of the women’s gait and their unconvincing way of pointing out a slanting headstone to each other.

  “There they go,” Alleyn thought. “It’s all round the village by now. Police up to something round the grave! We’ll have a queue for early doors tomorrow night.”

  He drove past the turning into Stile Lane and on toward the road that led uphill to Mardling Manor on the left and Quintern Place on the right. Keys Lane, where Verity Preston lived, branched off to the left. Alleyn turned in at her gate and found her sitting under her lime trees doing The Times crossword.

  “I came on an impulse,” he said. “I want some advice and I think you’re the one to give it to me. I don’t apologize because, after all, in its shabby way it’s a compliment. You may not think so, of course.”

  “I can’t say until I’ve heard it, can I?” she said. “Come and sit down.”

  When they were settled she said: “It’s no good being heavily tactful and not noticing your face, is it? What’s happened?”

  “A boy and a brick, is my story.”

  “Not a local boy, I hope.”

  “Your gardener’s assistant.”

  “Daft Artie!” Verity exclaimed. “I can’t believe it”

  “Why can’t you?”

  “He doesn’t do things like that. He’s not violent: only silly.”

  “That’s what Bruce said. This may have been mere silliness. I may have just happened to be in the path of the trajectory. But I didn’t come for advice about Daft Artie. It’s about your goddaughter. Is she still staying at Mardling?”