by Doug Allyn
Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 104, No. 4 & 5. Whole No. 633 & 634, October 1994
The Passing of Mr. Toad
Black Water
Sunset on the Padang
The Theft of Twenty-Nine Minutes
The Jury Box
Come Night, Come Silence
Murder Mystery
Wild Strawberries
The Eye of the Beholder
The Corpse in the Attic
Two Feet of Steel
The Telephone
Satan and the Printer
Window Shopper
The Final ParagraphMurder on the Internet
The Hit
Perfect in Every Way
I’ll Never Leave You
Fox in the Briars
* * *
Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 104, No. 4 & 5. Whole No. 633 & 634, October 1994
The Passing of Mr. Toad
by Jeffry Scott
© 1994 by Jeffry Scott
A new short story by Jeffry Scott
For many years pseudonymous author Jeffry Scott was a reporter for the London Daily Mail. These days, he’s a Daily Mail editor, and a very prolific short story writer as well. Mr. Scott has an eye to all that goes on in the mystery field, and in the book business generally, since one of his editorial responsibilities is to scout for books to be serialized in his newspaper...
❖
The day was idyllic, almost uncannily perfect. That made what followed seem so much worse.
I remember standing with one foot up on the log, morning woodland scents blending with the aroma from a mug of coffee in my hand, and feeling a rare sense of awe and gratitude, my nearest approach to a religious response. Appropriate, since it was Sunday.
If you have no patience for ain’t-nature-grand and This-sceptred-isle stuff, skip the next bit. But be assured that it’s relevant...
My cottage being set among trees, a formal garden (any garden apart from spring bulbs in concrete tubs, replaced by bedding plants come summer) is a waste of time. There’s a patio, a ledge I hacked out of the hillside, with a tree trunk set at the edge to stop me strolling over the brink after the second or third sundowner. The ground falls away so steeply that standing out there is like riding in the basket of a hot-air balloon.
St. Mary’s is a ten-minute walk away but the little church’s steeple is only yards off in a straight line, and almost directly below my place; one looks down on the gilded weathercock instead of up at it. As for the surroundings... What do they boast about in Ireland, a hundred shades of green, a thousand? We have a mere fifty along the Drawbel Valley, but that’s enough. Trees and bushes, mainly rhododendrons run wild since the heyday of a landscaped and manicured Victorian estate. Some laurels, many pines, and at a widened turn of the zigzag track, a veteran cedar to shade the horses when carriages brought ladies to the house to execute anaemic watercolours on clement days, last century.
Admiring all that, I was half asleep, caused by being very late to bed, and up early. To, as the old joke goes, get home again. An ignoble part of my mind — men really are the limit, some of us, that is — was gloating. Nothing adds spice to an affair like conducting it in secrecy. My partner was unmarried, but she had an image to protect. As a bachelor with no image to speak of, I cared less about keeping village gossips in the dark. But she was the boss.
Out there on the patio, another side of me was enquiring what had happened to my scorn for no-future flings, and warned that any amount of issue-confronting and assessment of emotions lay ahead. Conscience nagged that I wasn’t a teenager. Nor, for that matter, was the lady.
But all that faded as I took another look across the valley. My end of the Drawbel is deep and narrow, the wound left by a titanic axe — how that simile made me wince in hindsight! As mist burned off, the landscape emerged like a photograph defining in developer fluid. Trees, the steeple, houses amid greenery on the far slopes were all fresh-minted, in that overture to a glorious summer day. Intellect insisted that Bristol, no small city, was only ten miles away, but it might as well have been a million.
“Dear God, it’s pretty,” I mumbled inadequately, and smacked my lips over the coffee, which had no chance of keeping me sleepless. Aching to get to bed yet too idle to move, I compromised by sitting on the fallen tree.
Right after the event I kept telling myself, “Nobody ought to die on a day like this.” It showed how shaken I was. Not the hardened man of semi-action (witnessed a lot, partaken of little) that vanity had suggested. Before lucking out with the novels, I was a trained observer — sounds better than reporter, don’t you think? — and had seen a fair amount of violence and carnage. Was shot at, arrested by the breed of police imposing force rather than upholding laws, survived an air raid: standard been-there-done-that experiences of most foreign correspondents.
None of that prepared me for what befell poor Ben Basgate...
Living on the edge of Petticoat Wood ought to have accustomed me to lethal violence. Stoats and weasels kill rabbits, foxes kill hens (and rabbits), magpies kill songbirds even before they hatch. The rabbits don’t get much of a look-in, but are known to kill their own young, not to mention endless vegetation, and so it goes, day and night on my doorstep. However, human beings count more in the scheme of things. Or so they believe.
But given the context of that cathedral hush and almost daunting beauty, death was unthinkable. When it struck, the impact was all the greater.
I must have dozed, surfacing with a stiff neck and clutching a mug of cold coffee, some of its spilt contents soaking my jeans. It was about nine o’clock, birds sang and there was the faintest whisper of traffic on distant, invisible roads, sounds giving the amphitheater added texture, somehow.
And gradually I became aware of another instrument in the orchestra, suggesting the rattle of a busy woodpecker, but slowed down and oddly close, though it could not be. Tock... tock... tock. Certain noises do float across the valley in still weather, possibly echoing off the slate tiles of St. Mary’s steeple to reach me so clearly.
The measured knocking aroused my curiosity. I knuckled my eyes and gazed around for the source.
A flash of pillar-box red drew my attention. Monks Farm was better than a quarter-mile away on the opposite side of the valley, its chimneys puncturing the froth of trees like masts poking from green clouds. The red fleck was a lot lower down, about the level of the farmhouse’s front lawn. My vision is less than hawklike, but I gathered that Ben Basgate was up and about.
The majority of local folk had no time for Ben, regarding him as a traitor of sorts. Village small-mindedness and envy shaped that opinion. It’s the classic can’t-win syndrome of country communities anywhere in the world — I have recognised the phenomenon from Australia to America, Vietnam to, well, England. Anyone leaving a village to better himself is scorned as a loser if he fails, a show-off if he comes back...
Ben Basgate was no loser. He quit school at fifteen, ran away to London, made money in advertising, and amassed more by selling out and going into the restaurant business. After his widowed father died, Ben came home to the valley to take over the farm.
His idea of agriculture disgusted Drawbel’s opinion makers. In their eyes he let the holding go to rack and ruin, compounding the sin by getting paid for it because Common Market regulations encourage farmers to leave their fields f
allow. Set-aside subsidies was the name of the game, and didn’t it put local noses out of joint when Ben Basgate cashed in.
He ran a pop festival on his derelict acres — the village loved that three-day ordeal and the mess left in its wake — to turn a supposedly tax-free profit. Ben opened a “farm shop” stocked with stuff bought at city cash-and-carry outlets, passing it off as organically raised on the premises... until county council snoops closed it down.
There was no harm in him, but then I didn’t live near Monks Farm, except as the crow flies. Half his larks were dreamed up to annoy the natives, simple as that. We got on fine; my secret nickname for Ben Basgate was Mr. Toad, he had that Wind in the Willows air of self-importance and innocent glee at being himself. A hairless head, bulging eyes, and wide mouth endorsed my label.
The one I felt sorry for was his nephew, Tom Oates. Tom had always wanted to be a farmer. So when Ben went off to seek his fortune and his dad got doddery, there was Tom Oates to act as proxy son and work the place for him. In an ideal world he would have inherited Monks Farm. As it was, Ben kept him on as manager, though precious little remained to manage. All credit to him, Tom stood up for his uncle, though privately he must have agonised over Ben’s misuse of prime land.
Anyway, I lounged on my log, emulating the proverbial bump, watching a speck of red and wondering what the man wearing it might be doing. Ben never went outdoors without that baseball cap. All I could make out was the spot of color, but it seemed to be bobbing to and fro. Every now and then came a silver flash... And that tock would stammer across the valley.
It took minutes for the message to sink in. Then I jumped up and, ludicrously, shouted, “Oi, stop it! Ben, stop that!” My voice sounded hoarse and feeble, as well it might.
The cheek, the nerve, the... sheer Mr. Toadness going on over there, appalled me.
Of course the vandal had got up early. Of course the red cap was moving in an arc with the rest of Ben Basgate. Of course steel caught the sun from time to time.
To explain: Monks Farm was rather grand, in its mid-Victorian, box-of-nursery-bricks way. Three floors, a pillared porch, gravel drive — and in the center of the lawn, soaring thirty feet or so, one of the finest monkey-puzzle trees in the county. Ben Basgate claimed that it was an eyesore, darkening his lounge. He had threatened to cut it down (largely to annoy his neighbours, whom he taunted as stick-in-the-muds). They, as inimical neighbours will, whispered in councillors’ ears, and as councils will, ours slapped a preservation order on the monkey puzzle. An Englishman’s home is his castle, but only while council planners aren’t looking.
Now Mr. Toad was having the last word by chopping the thing down. The worst that could occur was a fine of a few hundred pounds. Knowing Ben Basgate, he’d consider it money well spent. The subsequent row, daunting to most people, would strike him as a bonus...
The axe swung, and an instant later the sound of steel on timber bounced off the spire below me. Tock, pause, tock. Evidently he was tiring. Ben was no lumberjack, but a bald, podgy amateur.
Dithering, first I made for the cottage, meaning to phone him. Then I changed direction to the garage. He might ignore the phone, always supposing he heard it out there, but a visitor couldn’t be overlooked. Only it would take me a quarter-hour to drive down the zigzag track — very slowly if I wanted the muffler in place on reaching the road — and get to Monks Farm. So maybe the phone was a better idea after all, though the chances were that the monkey puzzle was past saving, either way.
Confirming my pessimism, a creaking, tearing noise rippled through still air, followed by a faint crash from over there. A scribble of birds defaced the sky over Monks Farm, danced briefly, and erased itself. I stood still, caught between cursing and laughter.
Mr. Toad had been and gone and done it, my word he had.
If it’s not labouring the point, we had plenty more trees around Drawbel. And I have never been fond of monkey puzzles with their multiple “tails” of branches; for my money they’re grotesquely ornate unless it’s ornately grotesque, like so many ugly examples of Victoriana.
All the same, I got the car out and set off to see Ben. The man was a fool to himself, and needed to be reminded of it before the lynch mob arrived. Not a real necktie party, but Peter Stuckey and his shrewish wife were probably phoning round the village by now, stirring up trouble for Ben. The Stuckeys were “proper farmers,” Ben Basgate’s nearest neighbors, and they detested him. He was quite likely to jeer when they turned up to protest, and that might well increase the amount of his fine when the inevitable case came to court and they gave evidence. Ben could spare whatever the magistrates decreed — on the other hand, I was the nearest thing he had to a friend, and owed him advice. The fact that Mr. Toad would ignore it was another matter...
“Idiot!” I said out loud.
It didn’t take long to reach Monks Farm, once out of Petticoat Wood. You go half a mile in the opposite direction, then up the dogleg of lane to Ben Basgate’s home, the Stuckeys’ place, and a few other dwellings.
Gravel sputtered under my tires and suddenly the car was skidding across Ben’s drive because I’d tramped on the brakes. I jerked forward and stalled with a nasty, expensive sound which I forgot about until the following day.
The monkey puzzle was down all right, its tip spearing across the lawn. About halfway along the trunk, a foot and a hand were visible under the tangle of bottle-brush tails of foliage. I got out, mouth dry, fighting that underwater-walking sensation of nightmares.
Gross, heartless humour is a blessing at such times. It’s a form of anaesthetic. Going down on one knee, I pawed among the leafy monkey tails, telling myself that if Ben Basgate wasn’t dead, then he had found a way of surviving with his head and chest smashed flat. As a matter of form I tried for a pulse in his wrist, and of course there was none.
“What the hell are you playing at?”
The angry shout made me gasp and topple sideways, heart hammering. Tom Oates barged past, only to recoil, a hand clamped over his mouth. “God... it’s Uncle Ben.”
“Come away,” I gabbled, “we can’t do anything.” Tom looked terrible, as well he might — pallor startling in contrast to all that blue-black hair, shiny with grease.
“We’ve got to get him out,” Tom whimpered. He was thirty-five, a stolid, sturdy, thoroughly capable man, but shock had reduced him to a faltering youngster. He started wrenching at the nearest branches, teeth bared, a vein rising on his forehead; I had to wrestle him back.
“Tom! He’s past help. Use your head, they’ll need lifting gear to shift this thing.” I cleared my throat. “I think we’re supposed to leave everything as it is. For the police.”
Not appearing to take that in, he demanded, “What’s been going on here?”
“What does it look like? You must have heard the tree come down.” Tom lived in a bungalow a few hundred yards along the lane.
He blinked at me, working things out. “Yes... it would have made a right racket. I was cleaning house, it’s my day for it. Had the music on.” He was wearing jeans and T-shirt, and now I noticed the Walkman clipped to his belt with the earphones slung round his neck, stethoscope fashion. “Saw you drive past like a madman, thought there might be a fire here or something,” Tom explained.
“You’d better ring for... well, an ambulance, I guess. And the police.”
Tom didn’t move. Face twisting, he muttered, “Uncle, Uncle, what did you think you were doing?” Gently I drew him away. In the end I had to make the calls. Doglike, Tom simply refused to leave the body.
I sat on the doorstep, wishing I hadn’t given up smoking. The next twenty minutes were interminable. After ten of them, I badgered him into going indoors and making us a cup of tea. He needed distraction.
Swept off his head by a flying branch, Ben’s baseball cap caught my eye. Automatically I picked it up and set the thing on a window ledge, wiping my fingers afterwards. Dismiss it as squeamishness, but while I can handle blood, literally or
metaphorically, there was something uncommonly disturbing about the momentary touch of a dead man’s sweat...
Stan Ethrington beat the ambulance to the scene. We don’t have a village bobby anymore, but PC Ethrington lives in the area, so we see more of him than his colleagues. He was in gardening togs, grass-stained flannels and green rubber boots. “The coroner’s office will be along soon, but County HQ gave me a bell, seeing as I’m nearest.”
Then Stan, repeating Tom Oates, asked, “What’re you doing here, Billy?”
“I saw it happen. Sort of. Heard him chopping away at that damned tree, you know how sound carries on a day like this. Heard it come down. Dashed over to act as umpire in case Pete Stuckey and his she-devil were giving Ben a hard time. And I found... this. Him.”
“Ah. Then you had better wait for PC Dennis, he’s the coroner’s officer.” Stan Ethrington gave the monkey puzzle and its victim a cursory examination. He sighed and shook his head. “Typical, eh? Mr. Basgate was a bit childish, for all his smart business ways. See-and-must-have kind of style, no foresight. Did you think he meant it about doing away with the old monkey puzzler? ’Course not. But the fancy took him, and that was it... My kids are just the same, but the oldest is six, so there’s some excuse.”
He wasn’t being snide, just expressing oblique regret for Ben. “Wouldn’t care to fell anything that was taller than me,” he continued. “Seems simple, but there’s more to it than you’d bargain for. Downright dangerous — shame he wasn’t much for stopping and thinking.”
“The trunk looks quite slim,” I agreed, “it must have seemed easy to deal with.” And then everybody arrived at once: the ambulance, the police surgeon in tennis whites and a brand-new Volvo, and the coroner’s officer, a kid looking hardly old enough to shave, aboard a motorbike.
The ambulance men could do nothing for Ben Basgate, but Tom Oates was in a pitiable state, shaking uncontrollably, so they bore him away to Barford General “just to be on the safe side.”