Death in the Fearful Night (An Inspector Littlejohn Mystery)

by George Bellairs

  “Go on with your story then, please, Mrs. Quarles.”

  She gave him a bleak look and resumed in a shrill, dry monotone.

  “It’s been gettin’ on Quarles’s nerves more and more. Every now and then, he used to have one of his do’s and it was then that he tried to do away with himself. But his brother comin’ and Quarles strangling him …”

  “Did you see all this, Mrs. Quarles?”

  “Of course. I wouldn’t be able to tell you what happened if I hadn’t been there, would I? His brother arrived one night. It was raining and he was wet-through. He’d not had a meal for two days and he’d been hidin’ in Freake’s Wood. He’d escaped from an asylum at Lincoln and he said he made straight for our place. We asked him why he hadn’t come right away instead of hidin’ … Look! What about milking them cows …?”

  “We’ve asked Mr. Cropstone to look after them for you. He’s sent a man down.”

  “I shan’t pay him. It’s not my fault.”

  Herle shrugged his shoulders at some invisible person.

  “We’ll see you don’t have to. Now, will you get on with the story? What was the date of your brother-in-law’s arrival?”

  “September 28th. I told you before. It was rent-day. That’s why I remember it. He came in after dark, soaked to the skin. I got him an old jacket of Quarles’s and as he was changin’ it for his own, a hymn-book fell out of the pocket. What he’d taken it for, I’ll never know. He was mad, you see …”

  She said it in a kind of awe, as though he might have been a mystic or a magician.

  “My husband picked it up and he knew straight away what it was. It was Nancy Tooley’s. Her name was in the book. Albert … that’s the name of Quarles’s brother … said he’d picked it up on the road. But as he’d said when we asked him if he’d had any food, that all he’d had was a few scraps and that he’d lost an orange and a turnip that he’d pinched from behind a stall in Carleton open-market, we knew. The paper said they’d been found beside Marlene Turville’s body. You see, Albert was put-away for killing a girl near his home in Norwich. He’d had these mad spells ever since his girl left him waiting at the church on their wedding-day and ran off with another man. Not that he wasn’t odd before. All the Quarles family were mad. Their father died in the asylum. But when the spells came on Albert, he always went for young women.”

  “Your husband accused him of the crimes, Mrs. Quarles?”

  “Yes. Quarles said he’d have to give himself up and go back to the asylum. Albert went off his head again and went for Quarles. He pulled a knife out of his pocket. Quarles held the hand with the knife and got Albert by the throat with the other. They went all over the place knocking things about. I’d a lot of tidying-up after it, I can tell you. The table overturned with eggs, butter and milk trampled all over the floor. I don’t know which was the madder, Quarles or Albert. In the end, Albert got the knife free and, as I could see he was going to use it on Quarles, I hit Albert over the head with a bottle with a ship in it that we kept on the sideboard. He passed-out at that, but Quarles wouldn’t stop shakin’ him by the throat. Swearin’ awful he was and froth on his lips. In the end, when I got him away, Albert was dead. When Quarles came to himself, we talked it over. We didn’t want any bother with the police and, as it would all come out that Albert was Quarles’s brother, we’d have to leave the district, even though Quarles would get off with self-defence. We didn’t want the expense of another removal. So we buried his body under the manure in the yard. We put the knife and the hymn book with it.”

  “We found them. They’re here.”

  Herle pointed to a side-table on which reposed the messy relics of the Carleton Unthank crimes.

  Outside, it was raining and the woman opposite them, twiddling her thumbs, was staring at the drops running down the window-panes.

  “Quarles got worse and worse after that. He kept thinking that Albert wasn’t dead and was coming back after him from under the manure heap. Dead’s dead, I told him, but he wouldn’t listen. He seemed to be getting over it a bit, when Sam Bracknell was killed. That did it. ‘What did I tell you?’ he said to me. ‘He’s got out and killed Bracknell. It’ll be me next.’ You remember when you called, Mr. Herle, to ask if we’d seen anythin’ the night Sam Bracknell was killed. I said Quarles had gone to town. He hadn’t. He was hid in the loft. I daren’t let you see him. I locked him in. He’d have said it was Albert who’d killed Bracknell and that would have made you suspect Quarles. I couldn’t have him taken for a thing he hadn’t done.”

  Herle looked round the room flabbergasted. He seemed to be trying to assure himself by recognising familiar things, that he wasn’t dreaming it all.

  “That’s all?”

  “Yes. Except that after that Quarles wouldn’t stir a step without his gun. And he never went to bed again. He’d bolt and bar the door and sit staring with the gun between his knees till daybreak. Then, we’d milk the cows and do the other work and he’d never say a word. I went to bed and slept. You need your sleep when you’ve work to do and I did the most of it. Last night I left him as usual. When I got up at half-past four, there he was. I didn’t need to cut him down. He was nearly cold. So I got out my bike …”

  She was as mad as a hatter, too. Living with the crazy Quarles, scraping, scheming, listening to his insane talk, subject to his violence and obscenity, she’d gone round the bend and even co-operated in his scheme to hide the body of the brother he’d killed. It was all part of the day’s work in Turville’s Ground.

  The solemn Drayton appeared again and led out Mrs. Quarles.

  “Come on, my old dear,” he said. “Wait along o’ me till the car arrives.”

  It was an ambulance to take her to the mental home at Fenny Carleton. As co-operative as she had been in her husband’s crime, she allowed herself to be quietly led away.

  The police-car took them down to Turville’s Ground. Two constables and a couple of farm labourers had been busy there for hours. The bodies were under tarpaulins ready for removal to the morgue. The house was poverty-stricken, but neat and tidy. Mrs. Quarles had even washed-up the breakfast dishes before cycling off for the police.

  Littlejohn wandered about the farmyard and then among the poorly-furnished rooms of the house, smoking his pipe, fascinated by the secret life lived here for so long by the two mad people who had finally reached the end of their tether and fallen into the pit. As he stood in the kitchen, he saw again the wild, fatal fight between the brothers, so suddenly ended by a blow from Mrs. Quarles with a ship in a bottle. The broken pieces of glass and the shattered model set in a stormy sea of coloured plaster were still on the sideboard, as though Mrs. Quarles had been loath to part with them.

  The bedroom was the same. The high walnut bed had been made and the old-fashioned dressing-table had been polished. Old portraits of strange men and women hung on the walls and a few flyblown texts in Oxford frames expressed sentiments which now seemed pathetic.

  Herle met them again at the front door, where he had been giving some final instructions. Scraggy chickens picked and scratched round their feet and one or two of them hesitantly entered the kitchen and ate morsels from the floor.

  “It looks as if there was a streak of killing mania in Quarles as well as his brother. I wouldn’t put it past him to have gone and murdered Bracknell after he’d killed and buried Albert. We’ll have to question Mrs. Quarles again, if she’s compos mentis. A reasonable theory would be, that Albert killed the two girls; his brother—his name’s Oliver, by the way,—kills Albert, buries him, and then goes off his head himself. Mrs. Quarles said as much, didn’t she? It could be that Bracknell saw Albert on his way to Turville’s, or he might even have seen them fighting. He asks Oliver about it when he sees him. So Oliver kills him for his own safety. Something on these lines, don’t you think, sir?”

  Herle looked quite pleased with himself.

  Littlejohn knocked out his pipe against the door-jamb.

  “Albert was dead lo
ng before Bracknell was killed. That eliminates Albert. Albert seemed to have a fancy for knives, not Oliver. You might ask Mrs. Quarles if she recognises the knife, or if Bracknell spoke to her husband after Albert’s death, perhaps asking questions or threatening to tell the police.”

  “I did show her the knife that killed Bracknell, at the station. She said she’d never seen it in her life before. But that doesn’t matter, does it? Quarles might have had it among his tools and she wouldn’t know. She also said that they weren’t on speaking terms with Bracknell, who’d never been near the place for months. But she might have been occupied elsewhere when Bracknell called and spoke to Quarles. That doesn’t prove anything.”

  “You prefer to link all the crimes together, Herle. In other words, Oliver killed his brother, the murderer of the two girls, and then killed Bracknell who perhaps knew too much?”

  “Yes. That seems a reasonable solution, eh?”

  “No. I don’t think Mrs. Quarles allowed Oliver out of her sight during the day. In fact, I’ll bet the only time he was left alone was whilst she was snatching her sleep. She’d keep an eye on him to see that he didn’t disturb his brother’s body in the manure heap. Unless she’s lying—and why should she with her husband dead? If Bracknell didn’t call, why should Oliver kill Bracknell?”

  “A homicidal maniac. It’s in the family.”

  “But didn’t his wife say Oliver wouldn’t leave the place. He was, in his own tinpot way, seeing that the body stayed-put.”

  The ambulance had arrived to take away the corpses and the labourers were straightening the farmyard again and turning out the few thin cows into the pasture behind. One of them had unfastened the dog, a thin, docile little bitch, and was taking it home with him. The whole place was relapsing into silence and desolation.

  “So, you don’t think the case is finished, sir?”

  “The murder of Samuel Bracknell needs further investigation. We can’t leave it as it is.”

  “Why?”

  “In my view, someone has used the homicidal killings as a shield for another crime. Bracknell was a dark horse. He might have been a blackmailer. Who knows? On the other hand, he was involved with, at least, three women. That might open up a whole swarm of motives; revenge, jealousy, lust, rage … The presence of what you might call a public murderer in the vicinity was just what someone wanted as a chance to kill Bracknell. We must go on with the Bracknell case.”

  “Very well, sir. I’m in your hands.”

  “Perhaps we’d better come back to Carleton Unthank with you, and take another look at the files. We might get a lead.”

  A Gas Board van was drawing-up at the gate. Two men climbed out intent on urgent business.

  “Anybody at home?” asked the man who was obviously the senior of the two. He wore a bowler hat and carried an account book and a legal-looking document.

  “No. Why?”

  “We’re here to take away the gas-stove. They’ve not kept up their instalments of the H.P.…”

  5

  THE SOLE LEGATEE

  SITTING AT their lunch in the dining-room of the Huncote Arms, Littlejohn and Cromwell could see through the window all that was going on in the busy part of the town. They had spent most of the morning combing the files for fresh light on the case. It was a task which Littlejohn abhorred, but it pleased Herle and didn’t do any harm.

  Of one thing, however, Littlejohn was quite sure. Herle was afraid. So was everyone else in the town. The fact that Quarles’s suicide had eliminated a mad murderer and solved two of his crimes, didn’t make any difference. Herle and his fellow citizens were expecting another killing. And that, Littlejohn was convinced, was the cause of the local Superintendent’s nervous, jumpy attitude and his eagerness to keep Littlejohn on the move.

  It was just after one o’clock, it looked like rain, and the wind was blowing about the bits of paper littered here and there in the square in front of the hotel.

  It had been the weekly cattle-market that morning and a small crowd of men, obviously farmers, the relics of the crowd which had, around eleven, almost filled the square, were gossiping in little groups. Most of them wore breeches and tweed jackets and some were already half-seas over. A man in a raincoat and soft felt hat was moving among them, talking to this one and that, adopting a jocular manner, but not getting very far. He was patently a plain-clothes detective, seeking news about Quarles and Bracknell. Now and then, one of the farmers would take a little interest and start a long rigmarole, which, judging from the expression of the detective, had nothing to do with the case. Finally, he left them alone, and they watched him disappear into the market-hall behind, where, presumably, he was going to continue his enquiries.

  The dining-room was full of farmers. Men of the prosperous, more sophisticated type who’d got beyond eating their sandwiches in the main street. From time to time one or another of them cast sidelong glances at Littlejohn’s table.

  Bertha was supervising the luncheon. She had a black eye from a fall earlier in the day, but had contrived almost to paint it out with calamine lotion. A small boy in a soiled white jacket, who brought in the beer from the bar, entered with a note which Bertha snatched from him and took to Littlejohn. It was from Herle. The man couldn’t leave them alone!

  The Coroner, Mr. Sebastian Dommett, has arrived and would like to see you as soon as possible about the case. The doctor’s report on Quarles is in, too.

  Sebastian Dommett! It carried Littlejohn’s mind back seven or eight years, when an unusual series of murders had brought the Midshire Coroner and Littlejohn rather unpleasantly together. Dommett, whatever he might now have become, in those days had been a tartar. His favourite daughter had eloped with a police constable and the very sight of a uniform had made him see red!

  The coffee was poor and, to mend matters, a brewer’s lorry drew up outside the window and two burly men started noisily rolling barrels of beer along the cobblestones and down a chute into the cellars. It seemed time to go and meet the Coroner.

  When they arrived at the police station, it was to find Herle with a mass of books and papers, in fact, the files of the cases, spread all over the table. He seemed to be delivering a lecture to the Coroner and his men.

  “Well?” said Herle to Littlejohn, in cheerful greetings as he entered.

  “Very well, thank you. I hope you’re the same.”

  Herle looked surprised and started to introduce Littlejohn and Cromwell all round.

  The Coroner and two little men who were his clerks and, since he had been assaulted by a witness in a case ten years ago, his bodyguard as well. The police surgeon, fresh from examining Quarles and looking very pleased about it. The town clerk, to see that all the interests of the two Carletons were protected. Police constables Gullet and Drayton to add an official touch. And finally, Checkland, the mayor of the two Carletons, who was there for no apparent reason except that he was a pompous, self-opinionated man who was in at everything.

  “We’re going to my place for a cocktail when this conference is over. I hope you’ll join us,” said the mayor to the Scotland Yard men as soon as he was introduced.

  Mr. Dommett hadn’t changed much. The same Mephistophelian face and moustache, the same lean bitter manner, perhaps a little more bilious-looking …

  “We’ve met before, Superintendent. The Newport pentagon case, eh …?”

  Littlejohn even recollected the names he’d long ago given the two anonymous bodyguards, little men with bald heads, almost like a couple of twins. Tweedledee and Tweedledum. Already Tweedledee was whispering in Mr. Dommett’s ear. The Coroner indignantly dismissed him.

  “I said Newport Pagnell … It was the case of the two old ladies and Superintendent Littlefield arrested a man with a club-foot … What was his name? Pilkington … that’s it.”

  Littlejohn remembered neither the case nor the man with the infirmity. The mayor winked at him and so did Tweedledum. It was a good job he didn’t wink back at the bodyguard for he was, it
turned out, afflicted with a facial tic and was winking at everybody.

  Littlejohn felt like throwing in his hand and returning to the Yard. A Coroner who’d apparently lost his memory, and imagined things. The mayor, bothering about his cocktail party instead of the inquest. A member of the Coroner’s retinue winking all over the place. And now, Herle, surrounded by files and plans and looking very pleased with himself about something or other. He’d even had a drawing made of Turville’s Ground and Freake’s Folly and had spread out maps of the whole township and the roads leading in and out. The manure-heap at Turville’s was ringed round in red. There were other diagrams, too, with red arrows on them, as though Herle had been able to trace the tracks of the murderer after he’d killed Sam Bracknell.

  “Have you solved it?” asked Littlejohn. He couldn’t help it!

  The Coroner gave him a hostile look.

  “In the present circumstances, Superintendent Littlefield, your jokes are not in very good taste.”

  Herle casually handed Littlejohn a sheet of paper. It was the police-surgeon’s report. Albert Quarles had died of a fractured skull, not of strangulation! So, Mrs. Quarles had killed him with the ship in the bottle! No wonder Herle was smirking with self-satisfaction!

  The sun was beginning to stream through the windows, a drover passed with a flock of sheep, and a disabled men’s band came next, playing The More we are Together.

  Mr. Dommett snatched a document from the hands of Tweedledum and read feverishly.

  “So, it will be murder by the woman, suicide by the man, eh? The woman’s gone to the asylum, I see. Will she be well enough to testify?”

  “We hope so.”

  The surgeon spoke for the first time. He was a tall, heavy, ruddy man, who looked too important to hold much conversation with such a rickety-rackety crew.

  “You hope so? What do you mean by that, Dr. Fotheringay?”

  “The name’s Fothergill. She’s more composed now. In any case, she’s signed a disposition.”

  “Why didn’t you say so? Well, if that’s all …”