So Grimshaw rang up a friend, a master at the Bradburn Sixth Form College, and persuaded him to beg a set of records for a Civic Studies project. By three in the afternoon they had been delivered to the Superintendent’s desk. He picked up the first month’s copy—and was immediately called away to deal with a Justice of the Peace who was not happy about a search warrant that he had been asked to sign in a far corner of the territory. Then Bradcaster City Borough were on, asking to borrow anti-pickpocket reinforcements for a forthcoming football match. Grimshaw put the minutes in his briefcase and decided to do the rest of his day’s work at home. But not before he had read the first report that had come in from the Scene of Crime squad, together with a cautious and unofficial preliminary from the pathologist.
It was no surprise to learn that Beatrice Cater’s neck had been broken by a deeper drop than could have been contrived from her living-room beam. There were abrasions about her wrists and ankles suggesting that at some stage these had been tied. There was no sign of indecent assault. There was a specimen of alien hair about her genitalia, but she had not had intercourse within the last twenty-four hours. Specimens of two people’s hair found among her bed-linen were categorically declared to belong neither to Mrs. Cater nor to the other person with whom she had been in close contact. There had even been doggy hairs in the bed.
Inspector Heathcote’s team had made discoveries that bore strongly on the pathologist’s findings. Scratches in the paintwork of a wooden panel in the ceiling of Mrs. Cater’s bedroom, giving access to loft space, indicated that this had been recently moved. A groove cut into the deep dust on a joist pointed to where the rope could well have been made firm. A whitewood table in the studio-annexe, normally used for storing paints and brushes, had been cleared of its contents, and there were scratches in its spatterings of paint that could have been made while it was being used as a hangman’s drop. No explanation was attempted as to why the victim had been hanged in one place, then removed to be discovered in a neighbouring room.
Grimshaw had three copies made of these reports and had a motor-cyclist deliver them in places where they were likely to reach Mosley. He also instructed Mosley to establish an Incident Room in Marldale at once. He resisted the temptation to add that if he did not know what an Incident Room was, he could ask Beamish.
Meanwhle Mosley, who had arrived back in Upper Marldale with Beamish, was now showing no urgency about going to see Priscilla Bladon. He seemed in fact to have changed his priorities and now had time to kill. He took Sergeant Beamish up to the Old Tollhouse and turned him loose among the evidence on the spot, which the young man tackled with ardour and system. He found all that the Scene of Crime people had found, and more besides: all the minor damage done to paintwork, the loft-panel and the whitewood table. And all the while that he was searching, noting and deducing, Mosley sat in an armchair in Mrs. Cater’s polygonal living-room, with his coat open and his hat pushed back, sucking pensively at an unlit pipe. He was rather like a tired but dutiful father who has taken his children out to play in the woods, and who subsides on to the nearest log to let them get on with it.
Beamish went and carried the table in from the studio, set it under the loft-trap, and from that combination was joyfully able to discover a small tear in the wallpaper at the right height and size to have been made by swinging heels. He raised his voice in excitement as he pointed this out to Mosley, but Mosley behaved for all the world as if other men’s eagerness passed him by.
“Whoever did it came equipped with a complete hanging kit.”
“Not at all a bad thing to do, if you ever go out on a hanging expedition,” Mosley said.
Beamish came up from the carpet with a short length of cotton thread.
“Do you know what this was used for?”
“You have an idea, Sergeant?”
“To tie up a loop so that the noose was hanging at the right height to be slipped over the victim’s neck. It would break immediately the rope took her weight.”
“Finesse,” Mosley said.
“That’s the way the official hangman used to do it. I read it in Pierrepoint’s Memoirs.”
“He had had ample opportunity to work out the least troublesome way to set about the job.”
“So what sort of a murderer is it who comes out tooled up strictly according to Home Office practice?”
“A man who enjoys his work,” Mosley said. “There’s one way in which he doesn’t seem to have been equipped. There was no linen bag over her head. Do you know why that was, Sergeant Beamish?”
“Can’t guess.” “He didn’t want to miss the look on her face,” Mosley said.
He got up and went to look at one of Mrs. Cater’s abstract paintings: a number of unevenly overlapping squares in primary colours. Beamish came and joined him. Neither man ventured an opinion.
“Sergeant Beamish—I think I ought to give you a few preliminary warnings about Priscilla Bladon.”
“Yes, sir?”
Perhaps some of the senior officers who found Beamish wearing would have got on better with him if they had learned to tolerate his eagerness. Mosley did not seem to notice it.
“I can’t provide you with a formula for dealing with her, Beamish, because there’s no telling which version of Priscilla Bladon she’ll choose to present to us today. But I know one thing: if she appears irrational—it will be because that’s how she wants to appear. But let’s go back into town, shall we? It will be interesting to see what strangers have arrived.”
Chapter Eleven
“Headmistress of Marldale C of E Primary School for the inside of her life,” Mosley said. “Including the days before they used to ship them off to Pringle at the age of eleven. There’s a generation in Upper Marldale that received all the education they ever had at the hands of Priscilla Bladon. And it was literally at her hands. Take a look at those hands when you see them, Sergeant Beamish. You could picture them fixing a pit-prop. If you got one of those callused old palms round the back of your head with a well-judged arc of follow-through, you left off whatever it was she’d caught you doing.”
Mosley nodded through the car window at a man who was pushing a cycle along the Upper Marldale pavement. He was taking a rabbit-hutch somewhere.
“Never trained, of course, but none the less monumental for that. You get half a dozen old pupils of Priscilla’s together in a bar—which is likely to be happening at any moment in Marldale, irrespective of licensing hours—and it’s a fair bet what the talk will get on to. Take spelling, for example. Very keen on orthography, was Miss Bladon. If a lad got a word wrong more than once, she used to chalk it back to front on the sole of an old plimsoll, on the grounds that if she couldn’t work it in at the top, she’d knock it in at the bottom. Hullo! I thought our friend would be turning up.”
Mosley was looking back over his shoulder. Beamish could not see who it was that he had spotted.
“And of course, Miss Bladon didn’t consider that her responsibilities stopped at the classroom door. And by that I don’t mean a stamp-collecting club after four o’clock. If there was anything affecting a child in her school, then it became her business at once—and it was remarkable what did come to her ears. Take Matty Walton. When he was about six, Matty Walton had a spell of coming late for school, looked as if he hadn’t slept, used to faint during school prayers. Leave it to Miss Bladon. She soon found out that the trouble was the terrifying night he always had when his father came home pie-eyed from the Crook. So she ups and sees Jenny Walton. Little shrimpy woman she was, scared stiff of her Arthur, a damned great ox of a man, either amorous or aggressive or both when he’d had a pot or two. If she hadn’t got him a supper on the table, he used to throw everything out of all the food-cupboards. If she’d cooked him a meal, he’d scrape it on to the fire. But then one night when Arthur came home the worse for wear, he found two of them waiting for him—only Priscilla hid in the scullery till he had hold of his wife’s wrists and started shoving her up against the d
oor as if he was making love to her down some alley. Then Priscilla came up behind and clouted him two or three times across each ear-hole with those hands of hers. She put a mark or two on him that he took to work with him the next morning, then laid him out cold when she got bored with playing games with him.”
Mosley looked again over his shoulder.
“Pull over into Market Square, Beamish. We’ll waylay that young lady.”
Beamish still could not see who he was talking about. He followed Mosley over to the Community Centre, where they pretended to read the notice-board.
“Another time, young Tommy Haslam sat at his desk all one day snivelling. Wouldn’t for the life of him tell her what it was about. She couldn’t tempt him this way or that to let on what was going on at home—but she had no difficulty in prising it out of the neighbours. Tommy Haslam Senior had gone off to shack up with a barmaid in Bradcaster. So Priscilla Bladon pays Joe Scragg to give her a lift in one evening on his coal-wagon, and when Joe comes back three hours later, he has two passengers. Thomas Haslam hasn’t left home ever since. Nobody knows what Priscilla said or did to him.”
Mosley suddenly twisted round to face the pavement. Deirdre Harrison had come shambling up. There seemed something unco-ordinated about her gait: she might from a distance have been taken for a fifth-year secondary-school educationally sub-normal.
“Ah! Deirdre! Come to square up your yarn with Priscilla, have you?”
“It isn’t that, Mr. Mosley.”
“Did you find out what I wanted to know?”
“That didn’t take two minutes.”
“Let’s have it, then.”
There was normally a placidity about Mosley suggesting that all he had to do was to wait for events to explain themselves. But once or twice when they had worked together Beamish had seen a certain nervosity come over him. The signs of it were apparent now. Beamish wondered what Mosley would be like if he actually did become impatient. Maybe it would be no bad thing, once in a while.
“Do you really want us to talk here?”
Deirdre Harrison looked significantly about them, and there were one or two people in the High Street not known by sight either to Mosley or herself. A man in an Arran sweater was talking to a girl in a toggled duffel coat. Across on the other pavement two middle-aged men with telephoto lenses fitted to their cameras were chatting outside the Craft Shop.
“They can’t hear us,” Mosley said. “And if you could find out in two minutes, you can tell me in less.”
“Three punks,” she said. “One man, one woman, one indeterminate. Red Indian tonsures. All the trimmings. Age mid-twenties—or could have been drug-raddled adolescents.”
“What time was this?”
“About three in the afternoon. Joe Murray booked them in. Officially they should have been vetted by a subcommittee, but that often goes by the board. They’ve got a basic drill for casual visitors—but all it amounts to is that no one’s turned away on their first night, unless they’re fighting drunk. After that, it depends on how they fit in.”
“And whether they can be got rid of.”
Deirdre relaxed enough for a short-lived grin.
“Some of their methods are quite unscrupulous. I’ve actually heard an undesirable threatened with you.”
“That’ll be the day. So Joe Murray admitted these three?”
“They said they only wanted one room, and in the Glasshouse people don’t ask questions about personal pastimes. He put them in what used to be an NCOs’ annexe at the end of one of the huts. And what a bloody night the Glasshouse spent—at least, anybody within earshot of those three. Fighting, swearing, singing, three-ended sex—though which three ends was anybody’s guess.”
“Till what time?”
“Joe and one or two others went out to read the Riot Act between two and three. They’d locked themselves in, and Joe threatened to set fire to the hut if they didn’t pipe down.”
“Pity he didn’t.”
“Well, anyway, that shut them up to some extent. There was one more outbreak of singing—one of them had a guitar—but nothing to complain about by Glasshouse standards.”
“And then, came the dawn, they were gone?”
Deirdre looked curiously at Mosley.
“You on to something already?”
“Only what’s obvious.”
At this moment the man in the Arran sweater came up with the girl in the duffel coat, having beckoned to one of the photographers, who was unbuttoning his camera-case as he crossed the road.
“Miss Deirdre Harrison?”
Even for an outdoor shot he was using electronic flash, wisely for the afternoon murk of Marldale.
“And you must be Inspector Jack Mosley.”
Shopkeepers would have been readily helpful to the pressmen. Rather to Beamish’s surprise, Mosley co-operated quite meekly and gave the photographer the grouping he wanted. And already other reporters were appearing, like ants busied by the lifting of a stone.
“Are you yet in a position to make a statement?”
“Can you give us a slant on the witchcraft angle?”
“When is the next meeting of your coven, Miss Harrison?”
“Do you seriously think that there is any connection between this killing and twentieth-century black magic, Inspector?”
“May we say that you three ladies are putting your talents at the service of the police?”
“Will you be holding a session in the near future to look into your crystal ball?”
“What would be the official attitude to an offer of help from the ladies, Mr. Mosley?”
“You can quote me as saying that I shall be glad of help from whatever source it is offered.”
Beamish sighed. Mosley seemed determined to walk into it.
“Including sorcery?”
“I’ll consider everything on its merits,” Mosley said.
“Is there any truth in these rumours about the cats?”
“I don’t deal in rumours.”
“I believe you’ve carried out several investigations in this town within the last week or so. A cabbage patch. A hen run. Would you like to say whether you think there’s any connection?”
“Not until I know.”
“Is it true that Miss Cater had been refused admission to the coven?”
“That’s a new one on me,” Mosley said.
“If it’s true, would you say it has any significance?”
“If it’s true, I dare say it signifies something.”
“Do you see significance in Mrs. Cater’s relationships with the inmates of the former Glasshouse?”
“Yes. It signifies that some of them interested her.”
Beamish had a horrifying vision of some of the headlines that might more or less legitimately arise out of this exchange.
CID CONSIDERS SORCERERS’ HELP—MURDERED WOMAN REFUSED ADMISSION TO WITCHES’ SECRETS—PRESS PASS INFORMATION TO POLICE—INSPECTOR SEES SIGNIFICANCE IN GLASSHOUSE CONNECTION—
“Ladies and gentlemen,” Mosley said. “You want my help, and I want yours. I will meet you in the Crook Inn at nine this evening, and I promise you a statement about anything I consider you old enough to know.”
Beamish noticed that Mosley signalled to the Social Worker with an inclination of his head that might have been no more than a loosening of his neck in his collar. Deirdre Harrison slipped away from the edge of the crowd as Mosley engaged their attention with a new cryptic point.
“There’s just one thing I’d particularly ask you ladies and gentlemen to do. And if you work with me, I think I can promise every one of you a front-page by-line for the next few mornings.”
“What’s that, then, Mr. Mosley?”
“Just keep well and truly out of my bloody sight,” he said.
Laughter: very thin, uncertain, and in most cases delayed. But by then Deirdre Harrison had made good her escape.
Chapter Twelve
More than once Beamish had thought they were
on the verge of calling on Priscilla Bladon at last. But each time, a fresh wave of reluctance seemed to strike the old man and he found some fresh excuse to postpone the confrontation. This time he looked up at the church clock, declared that the pub would be open but that at this hour even the most dedicated drinkers of Upper Marldale would still be at the substantial meal that they called tea.
And this turned out to be the case. There was one old chap who looked as if he never did go home, but was allowed to slumber alone in his corner during those hours when even the Crook could not avoid being closed. And there was one elderly gentleman, dapper in a shabbily genteel way, who, from the state of his glass, had just come in, dead-heating with the unbolting of the door. Mosley and this character—who responded to the rank of Major—appeared to be well acquainted with each other, though the Inspector declined to drink at the ex-soldier’s expense. It was not long before Mosley had edged Major Hindle towards a shadowy corner and began putting low-key questions in a voice so diffident and quiet that Beamish, who was standing at his other elbow, had difficulty in picking up all the words.
“You’ll forgive my asking—sir—routine, you know—question of elimination—what time did you leave this pub last night?”
The answer came with a touch of comic bluster.
“Didn’t actually look at the clock, old man. Got to admit conversation sometimes carries us away. Wouldn’t want to say anything to get the landlord into trouble.”
Mosley countered this by not reacting at all. He simply waited until Hindle felt compelled to fill the silence.
“Bit after hours, got to admit. Still, I’m sure—”
“How long after hours? This could be important, Major.”
“Sorry. Couldn’t say within half an hour or so.”
“A little after two, perhaps? I am asking others, too.”
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