Fire in the Thatch

by E. C. R. Lorac

  “In the absence of any younger evidence, yes,” replied Macdonald cheerfully. “If the man who worked in that chimney in 1904 is alive now I’m going to try to find him. From my experience of rural builders, you generally get one old man who has the experience, plus one young man who has the muscles. Perhaps I shall find the young man of 1904 who would have been sent up to examine the inside of that chimney—he won’t be much over sixty, and country folk have long memories.”

  “And what on earth can he tell you that would be useful in 1944?” asked St Cyres helplessly.

  “This, sir. You say there have been no structural alterations at Little Thatch since 1904. If I can get evidence from a reliable workman that no beam impinged on that chimney in 1904, there couldn’t have been a beam to smoulder in 1944. From my knowledge of old buildings—a layman’s knowledge, admittedly—I don’t believe a beam did run through or rest on that chimney. The chimney was a stone one: it was built by itself and big cross beams wouldn’t have gone near it, and the roof tree was independent of it. Obviously I can’t get architect’s plans of Little Thatch—but I can get more information than has been adduced thus far. My function is to worry people, and to that end I am given more leisure than the County men.”

  Colonel St Cyres sighed—an old man’s sigh: “Well, Chief Inspector, I respect your zeal. For my part, I will disinter any of the old estate papers I can find. We keep old bills in the country, despite the salvage drive. I’ve often said that some of the most interesting local histories have been made from old account books.”

  “I quite agree, sir. Now, if it’s not inconvenient, may I see your daughter, Miss Anne?”

  “By all means. I think she’s about somewhere, I’ll find her. Meantime, a glass of cider or a cup of coffee, Chief Inspector?”

  “Thanks very much, sir. A glass of cider. I hope it’s a local brew.”

  “It is, and the best in the county in my opinion,” replied St Cyres.

  2

  Anne St Cyres was exactly what Macdonald had anticipated. Neat, self-contained and reliable looking, moreover “a bonnie lassie,” with a fresh skin, pretty hair, and her father’s blue eyes. Macdonald had never admired cosmetics, and he always tended to like a rosy-cheeked young woman who had the courage to ignore the temptations of perming and beauty-parlour experts—but Macdonald was growing into a real old stick in the eyes of those born since he first entered the Metropolitan Police in 1920.

  “You know what my job is, Miss St Cyres,” said the C.I.D. man, “and since I’ve arrived on the scene rather late in the day, I shall need all the help I can get. Your father suggested that Mr. Vaughan didn’t see eye to eye with Mr. Gressingham on the matter of private property.”

  Anne flushed, and looked rather distressed. “Yes, that’s true in a way,” she rejoined. “Mr. Vaughan asked me to go over and see Little Thatch after he had finished painting the house—at Easter—and I was there when Mr. Gressingham called. He was quite friendly and asked Mr. Vaughan to make up a four at bridge. Mr. Vaughan said he didn’t play bridge, and then Mr. Gressingham made a few rather condescendingly polite remarks about Little Thatch and said he’d like to walk round the garden. Mr. Vaughan said it wasn’t open for exhibition—but it was all quite trivial. Of course they didn’t like one another, but there was nothing in that. I don’t like Mr. Gressingham myself: he’s much too sure of himself and too disposed to be familiar at short notice—but all this was trivial, as I just said. It never occurred to me to magnify it into anything serious.”

  “Would you be willing to state that to the best of your knowledge and belief there was no enmity between the two men?”

  Again she flushed, and a frown deepened the lines on her forehead.

  “I have said that in my judgment they disliked each other, and I think I could add that they despised each other, but it was a surface matter. Mr. Vaughan didn’t brood over it or get irritable because Mr. Gressingham tried to be superior, and I don’t think Mr. Gressingham had any other feeling than a slight contempt for a man he described as an oaf or a tough.”

  “That’s very fairly put,” said Macdonald. “Now I wonder if you can tell me a bit more about the house and the work Vaughan had done on it. I ask you, because it seems that you had seen more of Little Thatch than anyone else. I know your father went over there fairly frequently, but he was more interested in the garden and land than in the house.”

  “Yes. He was delighted at the way the place was looked after—the garden cultivated and the orchards pruned and put into order.”

  “Quite—every man to his own job. Now about the wiring. It had been connected up with the plant?”

  “Oh, yes. He got that done nearly a month ago, and I went in and we turned all the lights on, it was great fun, but I believe he wasn’t satisfied with the way the engine was working. Some of the lights flickered, and he said he was going to disconnect it and examine the engine again. He said if he could only get at somebody’s lathe to make a new connection it would be a hundred per cent more efficient.”

  “I see. Do you know if he had turned the current on again?”

  “Yes, I passed the cottage fairly late one evening—after sunset, I mean—and the lights in the windows certainly weren’t lamplight.”

  “Next, can you tell me just how far the place was furnished?”

  “Not exactly, because I haven’t been over it since Easter, but I know he’d bought a good many things in the past month and a lot of wood and old panelling, too—that came from Hartsworthy House. He was building cupboards and putting up book shelves. He had an enormous number of books—well, it seemed enormous to me—crates and crates of them. I expect you mean, was there anything to burn? There was—a whole lot.”

  “Now wasn’t it to you that Mr. Vaughan said he’d found some loose bricks in the kitchen chimney?”

  “Yes, I asked about that particularly, because if the chimney was faulty it was the landlord’s business to put it right. He said it was perfectly sound: there’s a ledge half-way down the chimney—you often find them in old houses—and there was a jackdaw’s nest on the ledge, and two bricks had fallen in from the chimney stack, which has a brick coping. I did try to explain all this to the Superintendent, but he would keep on saying ‘Yes, yes,’ as though I were a child. That chimney is a stone one, Mr. Macdonald, it’s not built of brick at all, and if Nicholas Vaughan took two bricks out of it, it was because he knew where they’d come from—the coping of the stack. He even put a ladder up and found where the coping had been repaired. He was a thoroughly sensible person, and I won’t agree with anybody who says the fire was due to his own carelessness or stupidity.”

  Macdonald nearly said, “Well, well”—he felt he had learnt quite a lot from Anne’s long speech: instead, he said, “That’s very important evidence, Miss St Cyres. You agree with Commander Wilton then in being sure that the fire was not caused by accident due to the work done by Mr. Vaughan.”

  “Oh dear.” She uttered the two words wearily, and then made another effort to talk quietly. “I agree with Commander Wilton this far: that Mr. Vaughan knew what he was about, and that he was careful to the verge of caution. I do not agree with him that Mr. Vaughan was murdered. I think it’s a horrible suggestion and there’s nothing to support it. Accidents do happen. Isn’t there some advertisement on the hoardings about fires often being caused by careful people? However careful you are, accidents happen sometimes. You must have known lots of fires which happened quite accidentally.”

  “Of course I have,” replied Macdonald. He did not add that he had investigated quite a number of fires whose origin had only appeared to be accidental. “All the same, I wish you would tell me if anything about this accident struck you as suspicious?”

  “At the time, nothing,” she said. “Since Commander Wilton came, and there has been all this gossip and enquiry, I admit I caught the suspicion bug for a little while—but I don�
��t believe it. I think the Superintendent was perfectly right in his argument: why should anybody have wanted to murder Mr. Vaughan? Nearly everybody liked him and respected him, too. He was buried here, you know, in our churchyard, and the farmers came from miles round to his funeral. That may not mean much to you, but in the country people don’t go to funerals out of curiosity. They go because they have respected the man who died, and although Nicholas Vaughan had lived here only a short time, they all respected him, and he’d got to be friends with them, too—and that takes a bit of doing in these parts.”

  “I think Vaughan would have been very contented to see the farmers at his funeral,” said Macdonald, and his voice was gentle. “He would have valued their regard.”

  Anne flicked away some tears from her eyes impatiently.

  “I just can’t help feeling wretched over it,” she said. “He was such a whole-hearted, hard-working, decent-minded fellow, and it was such rotten luck, because, whatever people say, it was not his fault. I’m certain of it.”

  Chapter Eight

  1

  “What I want to know is this, Chief Inspector.”

  It was Thomas Gressingham who spoke. He had answered a number of questions which Macdonald had put to him, and answered, apparently, without reserve or resentment. Now Gressingham considered it was time he asked a few questions himself, and Macdonald had said, “By all means. Ask anything you want to.”

  Thomas Gressingham pointed a rather podgy, well-manicured finger to emphasise his query, “What proof have you got that the remains found in the embers of Little Thatch were the remains of Nicholas Vaughan?”

  A sound of exasperation came from the third man in the room—this was Howard Brendon, who had been with Gressingham when Macdonald first called. Rather to the C.I.D. man’s interest, Gressingham had asked Brendon to remain and witness the conversation, and Brendon, to Macdonald’s eye, had something of a legal cut about him. He had sat in silence throughout the interview until now, when he gave an exclamation of disgust.

  “My dear Gressingham, you’ve been reading an excess of detective fiction,” he said. “Your question savours too much of the cheaply sensational.”

  Macdonald replied next, “Obviously, Mr. Gressingham, I have no proof. A man’s body is found in the burnt-out remains of a cottage. The first supposition is that the remains are those of the man who lived in the cottage. While the remains were not identifiable in the usual way, there were certain observations to be made—approximate age, height, build—all these tallied with the expected. Since you have raised the point, do you care to state if you have any reasons for believing that the remains were not those of Nicholas Vaughan?”

  “Obviously, Chief Inspector, to follow your gambit, I have no evidence to offer. I never saw the remains, and it’s probable I shouldn’t have been any wiser had I done so, but that doesn’t debar me from using my reasoning powers.”

  “Nor debar you from making a fool of yourself,” said Brendon acidly. “If you think you can teach the police their job, Gressingham, you are in process of making a very tidy-sized fool of yourself.”

  “But I should be very much interested to hear Mr. Gressingham’s theories on the matter,” said Macdonald, and Gressingham needed no further encouragement to talk.

  “Look here, Chief Inspector, I’ve told you my views. From the little I saw of Vaughan I judged him to be a man who was intent on avoiding observation. When I first saw him in his garden and called a perfectly polite ‘good morning,’ he replied by turning his back on me. Country people don’t do that—they always pass the time of day cheerfully. I put him down as a town lout—an artisan. Fellows of the factory-worker type are too above themselves to have any manners these days. When I finally came face to face with him and spoke to him I realised he wasn’t an artisan type, he was an educated man, but a man who had something to hide. One of the first things he did in that precious garden of his was to put up wattle screens inside the fences.”

  “Got any hedges round your Surrey garden, Gressingham, or any walls? Or are your lawns and borders open to the public eye? Have you got notice boards up, ‘Come and look chaps! My flowers are for your pleasure’?”

  Mr. Brendon’s sardonic tones pleased Macdonald. The thin man went on in his incisive voice, “The reason that Vaughan did put wattle screens was that you and your friends persisted in stopping and staring into his garden, Gressingham. Country people don’t do that, to quote your own words. This Nicholas Vaughan sounds a man of common sense to me. I’m only sorry I never met him.”

  “I’m sorry too, Howard. I told you the chap reminded me vaguely of someone I’d once seen somewhere—but that eye-shade of his was good camouflage. Difficult to recognise a man with an eye-shade on—but he took it off when he was at home, so to speak. For public circulation only.”

  Howard Brendon got to his feet. “It appears that the Chief Inspector has the patience to listen to you, Gressingham. Frankly, I have not. As I see it, there has been a case of very deplorable accident resulting in the death of a hard-working, decent-minded fellow. I’d like to remind you that this Nicholas Vaughan once protected your prosperity by sailing in Arctic convoys. Now he’s dead he has no protection against libel or slander—”

  “But is he dead?” shouted Gressingham. “Prove to me he is dead! Somebody’s dead, but is it Vaughan?”

  Brendon turned to Macdonald. “You need patience in your trade, Chief Inspector.”

  Macdonald laughed. “In the words of a forgotten novelist, sir, I have the patience of innumerable asses. Not that I need to exercise it now. I am genuinely interested in Mr. Gressingham’s theories.”

  Brendon snorted. “You can hand that sort of blarney to those who’re dense enough to take it at its face value,” he said. “I recognise the good old technique—get a man talking and let him make a fool of himself. Fortunately Gressingham is too palpably foolish on this occasion to be taken seriously—but I underline my protest. Vaughan’s death shouldn’t be used as material for sensational balderdash.”

  “All right, old chap,” replied Gressingham, quite unnettled. “You come over again in a month or two, and we shall see what we shall see.”

  Howard Brendon nodded to Macdonald, and with a curt, “Good day to you,” to Gressingham, he left the room.

  “Vitriolic customer,” said Gressingham placidly, “but I never mind a bit of vituperation. Amuses me in fact. Brendon’s a very astute fellow and a very good judge of landed property. He often gets mad with me, but he soon gets over it. I watch his interests on the market, and he finds it worth while. Where were we? I know. I’d been making the point that Vaughan behaved as though he had something to hide.”

  “A very interesting point, Mr. Gressingham,” said Macdonald, “but do you think you can substantiate it? You say that Vaughan avoided you, but he didn’t avoid everybody. The St Cyres knew him pretty well. The farmers around met him at market, and he certainly did not avoid them. He went out of his way to talk to them and to discuss the farming methods in vogue hereabouts.”

  “Admitted, but how far afield do any of these farmers go? They go to their market town, certainly, but no farther. Similarly with Colonel St Cyres and his daughter, they live here and here they stay. When it came to myself, and my own friends, fellows who get around, Vaughan avoided us like poison. It was the same with young Mrs. St Cyres—June—if he saw her coming he edged off.”

  “So you suggest that Vaughan had something to hide, Mr. Gressingham? I take it you didn’t risk making that suggestion to Commander Wilton, who was Vaughan’s friend?”

  “Of course I didn’t. I should never have raised the point at all if it hadn’t been for the fact of your own appearance on the scene, Chief Inspector. If the Coroner’s jury were satisfied with the verdict of accidental death, it wasn’t up to me to cast aspersions. But—and it’s a pretty large but—since Scotland Yard has put in an appearance it’s p
lain there’s stinking fish somewhere. If there weren’t more in it than meets the eye you would not be here. Isn’t that a fair assumption?”

  “It’s rather an over-statement of the case,” replied Macdonald. “I am not here because any new evidence has emerged, nor yet because there is any official disagreement with the verdict of the Coroner’s court. I am here to reaffirm that verdict if possible.”

  “So you may say,” replied Gressingham, “but if there weren’t some sound reason for querying the verdict the Yard wouldn’t have sent a big gun down here to investigate things.”

  Macdonald paused a moment and then said, “Your friend, Mr. Brendon, saw the point more clearly than yourself, I think. Nicholas Vaughan was a very gallant seaman, and when his senior officer demanded a more detailed enquiry into his death, the Commissioner’s Office was glad to do its best, if only to honour the Royal Navy.”

  “Sez you,” replied Gressingham imperturbably. “I see all that—and very nice too—but I see a bit further.”

  “And what exactly do you see?” persisted Macdonald.

  “This. I see that there has been an opportunity of fraud and crime,” replied Gressingham. “Mark you, I say opportunity. I should like to make three points. In the first place, is there any proof that the man who took Little Thatch was the Nicholas Vaughan who earned such a reputation on the Arctic convoys? A man came here and examined the property, hustled old St Cyres into letting him have the tenancy and came into residence living entirely by himself and keeping aloof from observation. No friends of Vaughan’s ever turned up. The lawyer who acted for him down here had never seen him before, nor had the banker at Mallowton, where his account was moved to. Mark you, I’m not making rash statements: I’m not even making allegations, but you’ll find my observations are reliable.”

  “Would you like to state exactly why you made the enquiries you evidently made?” asked Macdonald, and Gressingham nodded.