Murderer's Fen

by Andrew Garve

  “I will have,” Dyson said. To Nield they seemed like a couple of stags, clashing their antlers.

  Dyson climbed down into the dinghy and carefully examined it. The floorboards were damp and muddy, and showed footmarks. All had been made by large gumboots.… He took the boards up and looked in the bilges. He found nothing of interest.…

  They moved to Hunt’s caravan. Hunt unlocked the door and stood back with studied contempt. “Help yourselves,” he said, “I’ll wait. …”

  “Thank you,” Nield said gravely.

  Inside, the policemen went meticulously over Hunt’s wardrobe and effects. They found more traces of mud, on trouser bottoms—but only small, dry specks. Dyson produced a powerful, waterproof torch from a drawer, and a pair of clumsy leather gauntlets, stiff with dried mud.

  Nield stood for a moment at the caravan window, gazing out. A thin autumn mist was beginning to settle over the fen, dimming the last of the afternoon sun. In all the vast expanse he could see only a handful of people—a picnicking couple packing up their tea things, a girl student with a notebook watching something in the reeds, a solitary angler.… It all looked very peaceful now, he thought. But what had it been like on Saturday night.…?

  “Well,” Hunt said, as they stepped down, “did you find any buttons torn off my clothes?”

  Nield shook his head. “That’s a fine torch you’ve got in there.”

  “Yes.… I suppose you find it sinister?”

  “I find it consistent.… Do you wear any other sort of gloves except those heavy ones?”

  “No.”

  “Let me see your hands.”

  With a shrug, Hunt held them out. Nield examined the backs. He found nothing but one or two old, healed scars.

  They walked slowly on along the lode past the line of cruisers. Most of the boats had tarpaulins over them. Some had pram dinghies roped to their cabin tops. Dyson glanced inside one or two of the cabins as they passed. Nield stopped beside Flavia, looking at the churned-up ground. A plank had been laid over the mud, and the cabin door was open. “I take it this is the boat you’re working on,” he said.

  “That’s right.… You can see how filthy the place is. Even with the plank, the mud splashes.”

  Dyson took a step or two along the plank.

  “That’s right, Sergeant,” Hunt said, “you go and have a look.… That’s where the clues are!”

  Dyson poked his head inside the disordered cabin, glanced around, and returned to the bunk.

  “You could take a sample of the mud,” Hunt said. “Check it with what’s on my boots. Have them both analysed.”

  Nield said, “Where do you burn your rubbish, Mr. Hunt?”

  “There’s an incinerator behind the shed.”

  They walked over to it. Nield removed the lid, felt the ashes. They were cold. He poked among the ashes with a stick. There was some partly consumed rubbish, mostly paper. No clothing.…

  “I hav’n’t used it for days,” Hunt said.

  They came to Hunt’s car and casually looked it over. There were the usual tools in the boot, various oddments in the glove box, some groceries and a bunch of bronze chrysanthemums on the passenger seat. Nothing else.… Then, as Dyson was about to close the driver’s door, a sticker on the door pillar caught his eye. It said, “Serviced, October 3, 1964,” and gave the name of the garage. It also gave the car mileage at the time of service—12,143.

  Dyson glance at the speedometer. The mileage reading was now 12,305. Just over a hundred and sixty miles since Friday.…

  Hunt was watching him with cold hostility. “You see, Sergeant—I did go to Peterborough.”

  “You could have done,” Dyson said. “But you could easily have knocked off the miles some other way.… Yesterday and to-day.”

  “Well, I didn’t,” Hunt said. “Yesterday I did about sixty miles for fun. And all I did to-day was buy some grub and go to a local nursery to get some flowers for Susan.…” He gave a bitter laugh. “A fat lot of good flowers are going to do me now.… !”

  Chapter Five

  It had been a good act—that was Dyson’s view. A glib liar and a skilful operator had had his answers ready and his tracks well covered.… Nield was more cautious—he preferred to suspend judgment until he had some solid facts. The best hope of getting any obviously lay in the evidence of the letter and what they might be able to discover in the fen. There wasn’t enough daylight left to start work that day—but to-morrow, Nield said, they would come back and take a long, close look at the place.

  He was reckoning without the weather. There was enough mist at Cambridge next morning to make him ring up P.C. Blake at Ocken and ask what conditions were like over the fen—and the report was bad.

  “Very thick, sir,” Blake told him. “It’s been thick all night—and you still can’t see more than a yard or two.… They say it’ll clear around midday, though.”

  Nield hung up, frowning. Good visibility was essential for the job they had in front of them. He’d do better to spend the morning catching up on his paper work. Meanwhile, Dyson could be filling a gap in their knowledge.

  He called the sergeant in. “I’d like you to take a run over to Newmarket,” he said, “and make some discreet inquiries about the Ainger family. Go in your own car, and don’t let on that you’re the police—I don’t want to start any premature rumours.… Give me a ring around twelve, and if the mist’s gone I’ll meet you at Ocken.”

  Dyson nodded. It was the sort of job he welcomed. An inquiry he could, organise in his own way.

  Visibility was already beginning to improve by the time he reached Newmarket. He drove first to the Crown Hotel to have a look at Hunt’s fiancée. From a passing waiter carrying coffee he was able to discover which of the two young women behind the reception desk was Susan Ainger. He took a seat in the foyer and for some minutes observed and listened. His conclusions were clear-cut and quickly reached. The girl was amiable and jolly; she was well-spoken, well-groomed and very well-dressed. But she was extremely plain. It was hard to believe that her charms alone could have been such an irresistible magnet for a man that after a single meeting he’d have thrown up his job and moved a hundred miles in order to be near her.… Not that one could ever be sure about those things.… But Dyson was already beginning to suspect that there might have been other attractions. Those clothes were expensive.…

  He went into the phone booth in the foyer and looked up the Aingers in the book. There was only one family of that name living in the immediate neighbourhood—at Lingford. He consulted a road map, and set off. Fifteen minutes and two inquiries later, he reached Copper Beaches. He parked his car on the grass verge a hundred yards beyond it and strolled back to look at the property. There were still patches of mist around, but not enough to obscure the view. And a splendid view it was.… He noted the long, agreeable elevation of the house; the pretty cottage and the large paddock; the spacious garage; the well-kept paths and lawns and the stately trees; the blazing beds of dahlias and chrysanthemums and Michaelmas daisies that told of full-time care by experts. A lovely country home.… Worth, Dyson thought, at a rough estimate, about thirty thousand pounds.…

  He drove on into Lingford village, found the local pub, the Horseshoe, and turned into the car park to sit out the ten minutes until opening time. So far, his reconnaissance was going well. He was covering the ground without any fuss—and another piece of the jigsaw was falling neatly into place.… All the same, something troubled him. Not just the saddening nature of the case itself—the growing likelihood that Hunt had murdered a charming and lovely girl for the most sordid of ends. Something technical.… At the back of his mind, Dyson had a curious feeling that he’d overlooked an important point—that something he’d seen that morning didn’t fit.… And he knew it would go on nagging at him.…

  As soon as the pub opened, Dyson went in, ordered a pint of bitter in the saloon bar, and fell into amiable conversation with the landlord. At a suitable moment, he mentioned his s
upposed business. He was down from London, he said, for a firm of estate agents and was interested in a house, called Copper Beeches.

  “We’ve a well-to-do client,” he explained, “who happened to see the house the other day when he was passing, and wants to buy it. He believes that every man has his price, and he wants us to try and talk the owner into selling.… But my guess is he’s going to be unlucky.”

  “Yes, I don’t reckon you’ll get anywhere with Mr. Ainger,” the landlord said. “He loves that place—and he’s got all the money he needs.”

  “He has, eh?”

  “Good heavens, yes—he’s rolling.… He’s one of these big property chaps. I wouldn’t be surprised if he could sit down and write a cheque for half a million.”

  “Then I’m obviously wasting my time,” Dyson said. He paused. “I suppose he’s got a family, too—and they probably like the place.”

  “He’s got a wife, and one grown-up daughter. She rides in the paddock there quite a bit.”

  “M’m.…” Dyson sipped his beer. “Not bad being the only daughter of a man with half a million, eh?”

  “I’ll say.… But she’s pretty well-heeled without her old man. There’s money on her mother’s side of the family, too, and she got left ninety thousand quid by her grandmother—came into it on her twenty-first birthday. It was in the local paper—they had a picture of her. Newmarket Heiress, they called her.”

  “I give up!” Dyson said.

  Now he hadn’t any doubt at all about Hunt. The picture was complete.… A lecher, a fortune-hunter—and a murderer.… Well, at least he wouldn’t get away with it.…

  At the first telephone box, Dyson stopped and reported his findings to the inspector.

  Nield took the news with outward calm. “Good work, Sergeant.… How’s the weather there?”

  “Clearing fast, sir.”

  “Right,” Nield said. “I’ll see you at the main entrance to the fen in an hour from now.”

  To Nield, also, there no longer seemed much room for doubt. As he drove towards Ocken, he mentally totted up the points against Hunt …

  The fellow had had as good an opportunity as anyone to seduce Gwenda Nicholls. The story he’d told to account for her presence at the site had been pretty hard to believe. He’d certainly had the opportunity to kill her. He’d had the facilities to hide her body. He was the last known person to have seen her alive. He’d given an explanation of her disappearance that couldn’t be confirmed. He’d given an account of his movements that couldn’t be checked. He’d had a motive, now fully revealed, of startling strength. And, last but not least, he’d been virtually accused of murder by an anonymous eye-witness …

  Even to a cautious man, it was quite a list. Any points in Hunt’s favour—and Nield realised there were some—seemed quite overshadowed by the circumstantial case against him. The question now was whether the fen would yield up the proof that was needed.

  Chapter Six

  Dyson had been waiting there for some time when Nield arrived. He had parked his car beside two large coaches with cards in the windows saying “Field Study Group”; changed into gumboots, and was now sitting on a grassy bank just inside the main entrance of the reserve, reading a Guide to the Fen that he’d bought at the warden’s cottage. Nield slipped on his own boots, slung a pair of binoculars over his shoulder, and joined the sergeant on the bank. The last traces of mist had dispersed, a pale sun was shining and the day was warm. They’d timed their expedition well.

  There was a rough plan of the fen attached to the guide and Nield familiarised himself with its main features before they left. The reserve consisted, it seemed, not of a single fen but of several, each with its separate name. Part of the area was criss-crossed with unbridged dykes and drains and offered no easy means of access except by boat, but a much larger part had been opened up to visitors by the cutting of droves through the reeds and sedge. There were a dozen or more of them, running in various directions and making up an irregular chequer board pattern. They, too, had names. Round the periphery of the opened section, a footpath was marked. Presently the policemen set off along it, crossing a footbridge, skirting a “No Smoking “sign, and continuing in the general direction of the hides.

  There was far more activity in the fen than Nield had seen from the caravan site on either of his visits. Near the entrance, a group of students in gumboots and waders, festooned with cameras and weighed down with haversacks and notebooks, were gathered round an elderly man in a deerstalker hat who appeared to be giving a lecture on the habits of water-beetles. Farther along the path there were more students in groups and pairs and singly, bending over plants, sketching leaves and flowers, collecting mosses, photographing specimens. Some of them, Nield noticed, had left the path and penetrated deep into the wet fen, their heads only just visible through the feathery plumes of the reeds that waved in the faint breeze. Two of them were standing in a frozen attitude, watching some bird or animal through field glasses.

  Nield began to look worried. He’d expected their task to be difficult—but this place was even more of a wilderness than he’d supposed. It might be a naturalists’ paradise, as the guide book said, but it was going to be hell for detectives in search of a body. On both sides of the path there were pools, surrounded by bulrushes, covered with water-lily leaves, difficult of access, and deep. Old peat diggings, the book said—and each a splendid hiding place. The reeds and sedge that stretched away behind them were interlaced with muddy tracks that might or might not have significance. Farther along, there were patches of almost impenetrable scrub, much of it buckthorn, where the sedge fen had been invaded by bushes. The droves themselves proved to be open and grassy, but they too were flanked by acres of reeds, all with their tracks where the researchers had gone in. Nield recalled with dismay the words of the anonymous letter—“I saw a man and a girl walking along one of the droves in the moonlight. I watched them disappear round a bend.…” But which drove? And which bend? At some point they all had bends. So where to look? The whole county police force could comb this place for weeks, and still find nothing.…

  Dyson was evidently thinking the same thing. “I’d call it a murderer’s paradise,” he said.

  Nield nodded gloomily.

  They walked on, gradually leaving the students behind. Presently they came to a sheet of water, an extensive mere with reed beds at its margins, open to the south, tree-lined on the slightly higher ground to the north. They were approaching the hides now. The first tower looked brand new. It was beautifully built, of reed thatch and timber, and sited among the tree trunks and boughs in such a way that from the mere it must have been almost invisible. The door had a padlock on it, and so had a gate in the fence that surrounded it. The older hide, fifty yards on, looked pretty dilapidated. Much of the thatch had fallen away and there was neither fence nor door. Dyson peered inside. The light was poor, but he could see a wooden ladder. He went in, followed cautiously by Nield, and tested the ladder for strength. “Seems all right,” he said.

  They climbed twenty feet and emerged on to a roofed-in wooden platform. The light was better up above. All round the tower there was a broad, unglazed gap at eye level, interrupted only by the wooden supports that held the roof. The ancient floor groaned and creaked under their tread. It was littered with old thatch and dead leaves, sweet papers and picnic debris.

  Dyson looked about him with distaste. “Not my idea of a love nest,” he said.

  Nield grunted. “At least it’s dry.…”

  They walked slowly round the tower, gazing out through the gap. To the south, there was a fine view over the mere, where birds in great variety were feeding and flying. Just below them, a heron stood motionless. Gulls wheeled and squawked, curlew called plaintively, mallard and teal wove in and out of the reeds.… At any other time, Dyson would have asked to borrow Nield’s glasses—but not now.… They continued their circuit. To the east and the west, the view was largely obscured by the trees. To the north, a wide segm
ent of fen was visible. The path they had just traversed, the reeds and the scrub, the pools.…

  It was Dyson who pointed in sudden excitement. “Look at that. … !”

  Nield followed the direction of his pointing finger. Through a tracery of tree branches, a pale green swathe was viable. Part of a drove.… And the only bit of drove in sight.… All the others, by the accident of angles, were hidden by the reeds. What was more, the drove had a bend in it, which was why only part of it could be seen. And beyond the visible section, in an almost dead straight line, the white of a caravan gleamed.

  “Yes …” Nield said. It certainly filled the bill—and no other place did.… But he was wondering about the distance. It was quite a long way to the bend. Could anyone in the tower really have heard a cry from down there?

  “Let’s try it out,” he said. “You go on ahead, Sergeant.… When you get to the bend, give a yell.…”

  “All right, sir.”

  “Not too loud.… I’ll join you down there.”

  Dyson departed. Nield watched him disappear among the trees. For a time he was out of sight. Then, through the glasses, Nield was just able to make out a moving head above the reeds. That would be the part of the drove that was obscured. He turned away, still standing close to the gap but making no special effort to listen. Several minutes passed. He was just beginning to think that Dyson must be out of earshot, that the experiment had failed, when he heard a peculiar but clearly audible cry.… Full marks to the letter writer.…

  He descended the ladder, made his way through the trees to the path, and quickly found the entrance to the drove. There was a name plate at the edge of the reeds—“Stoker’s Drove.” Running alongside the drove on the left was a twenty-foot-wide dyke of peat-brown water—“Stoker’s Dyke”.…