Full Fury

by Roger Ormerod

  ‘I don’t suppose Mr Crowshaw is, either,’ I said.

  ‘But he tries, Mr Mallin.’ There was a brief flicker of antagonism across his face. I’d upset him. ‘He tries.’ Then it was gone. ‘But young Mr Andy didn’t care. As far as he was concerned, the farm didn’t exist. He left it to me.’

  ‘Flattering.’

  ‘I like people to show a bit of interest. Look at the place, sometime, appreciate it. But he had fancy ideas. He was a climber.’

  ‘But he didn’t climb far.’

  ‘He was busy making connections. Usually female ones.’ There was no doubting, now, the contempt in his voice. Female ones! Drover would have hated them.

  ‘He’d have them up at the house,’ he said, ‘silly, giggling women, standing with his back to the fire and a glass in his hand like he was squire of the manor or something. I hadn’t got any time for that sort of thing.’

  ‘This was before Myra Gaines?’ I asked, and then almost laughed at my stupidity.

  ‘There wasn’t any after.’

  Because this time he’d got himself a female with a quiet and retiring husband who couldn’t handle the situation.

  ‘So when Myra Gaines turned up, you knew what the situation was?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes.’ He looked thoughtful. ‘But this time she was a married woman, and there was a husband, and this time he wasn’t using a woman for his social thing, she was using him.’

  ‘Using him in what way?’

  ‘To shake her husband up. Mr Gaines was like that, dreamy, couldn’t see a hand in front of his face.’ He smiled. ‘So she threw them together, Mr Andy and Mr Gaines, just for the devil of it.’

  ‘And he didn’t bite?’

  ‘There were some funny things said about Mr Gaines at his trial,’ Drover said thoughtfully. ‘I don’t know, it didn’t sound like the same man to me. Whatever anybody likes to say, he felt it. Oh yes, it hurt him, and I know it. He was hurt, and damned hard.’

  ‘But nobody else saw it?’

  ‘He was too proud. Just smiled, and said Andy Paterson was a heathen.’

  Myra’s word. ‘And was he?’

  ‘It’s a good word.’

  ‘You spoke often together, then?’

  He shrugged. ‘She’d bring him here, just to watch the two of them together, and Mr Gaines, he wasn’t going to let on he cared a fig. So he’d walk out and leave them to it. This was all through the summer, you understand. Now he’d got an interest, Mr Gaines had. He’d see me working somewhere, in the orchard or haymaking, say, and he’d walk over and we’d get chatting.

  ‘You admired him?’

  ‘He knew what he wanted. He was a man who knew how he wanted his life to be, and he went right out for it.’

  ‘And while you were both chatting away, you both knew your Andy and his Myra were canoodling in the parlour?’

  He chuckled. ‘Yes, of course. That’s another good word.’

  ‘So that your conversation would be slanted towards it? You’d perhaps mention it. So how did the talk get round to guns?’

  ‘Well, a kind of joke at first. You know. It was one of those evenings, the gramophone going in the living-room and Mr Gaines out smoking on the terrace, and I just happened to stroll up there. He grinned, kind of, and pointed his pipe stem at the window, and said it was a pity it wasn’t a gun. I knew what he meant.’

  ‘Did you? What did he mean?’

  ‘He wanted me to pass it back to Mr Andy. Mr Gaines talking about guns. You know—a gesture.’

  A gesture! ‘I know.’

  ‘But Mr Andy only laughed.’

  ‘So you did do it?’

  ‘Glad of the chance. I’d have liked to have seen the smirk wiped off his face.’ Drover was looking quite stern.

  ‘So he laughed. And then what happened?’

  ‘They came again. September, I think it was. We’d got the hay in, anyway. They were at it again, and I strolled on up.’

  ‘Just happened to.’

  He twinkled. ‘Yes. And there was Mr Gaines out on the terrace. So I told him Mr Andy had laughed. He sort of gave a half smile and said couldn’t I get him a real gun. You see, more gestures. So I thought, go along with it. See what Mr Andy said then. And I put him on to Mr Lovejoy.’

  ‘And that was the last time you saw Mr Gaines?’

  ‘Yes. I heard what happened, though. Lovejoy phoned me and told me all about it.’

  ‘Which you duly passed on to your Mr Andy?’

  ‘And he laughed again.’

  So in the end, gestures not getting anywhere at all, Neville Gaines had stormed up here, and finally wiped that smirk right off Andy Paterson’s face.

  ‘I’d have thought,’ I said, ‘that when it all happened you’d have felt just a little uneasy about the gun. You’d been the one to get it for him. Then your Mr Andy got himself dead. A bit drastic, wasn’t it?’

  He thought about it, then he spoke slowly, making sure he chose the right words. ‘I’ll tell you the truth, Mr Mallin. I stood there, and I saw Mr Andy dead, and I thought: that’s the end of him. Nothing more. I didn’t feel a thing. But conscience? Yes. What got me was that Mr Gaines had done it, and it was me landed him in all that trouble, sort of.’

  ‘So you regretted it?’

  ‘It didn’t seem right he should be hanged for somebody like Mr Andy.’

  ‘So that if the opportunity had presented itself, you’d have been glad to do something to help him?’

  ‘I didn’t tell any lies. Whatever Mr Crowshaw asked me, I told him the truth.’

  I looked at him carefully. He was a man of quiet dignity, a man you could trust. First attract his unswerving loyalty…

  I said: ‘Correct me if I’m wrong. Stop me any time. I’m going to take you back to that first day after the murder. We’d found one gun straightaway. But you were hanging around with your ear to the ground, and later on there was talk of two guns. Things were all lined up for the first of our two big searches, and it occurred to you that you might help your friend Gaines a little. So you searched, before we did, and you found the other gun. You genuinely believed it would help him if you hid it. So you took it into the orchard, and you buried it there. Am I right?’

  ‘Pretty fair right,’ he agreed placidly.

  ‘So that you knew, that first big search, and the second bigger one, that we hadn’t got any chance of finding it? Because we didn’t go into the orchard at all, as Paterson didn’t go there, either?’

  ‘All those healthy men,’ he said softly, ‘in all that terrible weather. Yes, I knew.’

  ‘I got the pig sty,’ I reminded him.

  ‘I remember.’ He would.

  ‘And that means,’ I said, ‘that when the second search turned up a second gun, you must have known that somebody had put it there to be found.’

  ‘That was obvious.’

  ‘And you said not one blind word?’

  He spread his hands. ‘What was there to say? That I’d hidden the other in the orchard? That’d be stupid, now wouldn’t it! I’d done what I could for Mr Gaines. He’d had two guns, and they’d found two guns. He didn’t lose by it.’

  ‘But they weren’t the right two guns.’

  ‘Does it matter?’

  ‘I don’t bloody-well know,’ I admitted.

  We’d exhausted the coffee pot. There wasn’t any more cake. I lit a cigarette. ‘But you must have guessed who’d planted that gun,’ I said.

  He nodded. ‘As soon as Mr Crowshaw said he was buying the place.’

  ‘But you didn’t say anything about that!’

  ‘Now… ask yourself.’

  ‘All you could do was watch him search for it?’

  Now he was serious. ‘I watched him,’ he agreed. ‘As soon as it’d gone through—the conveyance—he started coming up here. Week-ends. Holidays. He was always up here, and you could see what he was doing. Digging it up, sieving it through. And not finding it. But he went on. You could almost see him breaking up. On and on,
month after month. Then year after year. And I could see he wasn’t getting much nearer. In the end, it took three years. He’d sorted through near-as-damn-it four acres. I knew he’d get it, that Sunday. I saw him find it. I saw the expression when he got it into his hands.’

  There was almost awe in Drover’s voice when he finished, something like wonder in his eyes.

  ‘Drover,’ I said, ‘you’re a sadist.’

  For the first time he spoke sharply. ‘And what could I have done?’ he snapped. ‘Dug it up and left it where he’d find it sooner? No, that wouldn’t do. When he got to it, it’d need to look as though it’d been undisturbed.’

  He was right, of course. I cursed Drover for being so perversely right, and so wrong with his rightness.

  ‘Then it all came right in the end,’ I assured him. ‘Like a fairy story.’

  We said good night amicably enough. He stood in his doorway, and my hand was on his little gate. I turned.

  ‘Oh, and one more thing.’

  He smiled. ‘I thought you’d missed it.’

  ‘Where did you find it?’

  ‘In the cow byre,’ he said. ‘It was the first place I looked, Mr Andy being dead in the doorway.’

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  I turned round in Crowshaw’s yard, parked, cut the engine, and got out. Then I went and pounded on his door. It seemed a long time before I heard his voice.

  ‘What is it, Drover? What’s the trouble?’

  Then he opened the door and saw it was me. He’d got a quilted dressing-gown over his pyjamas, and his hair was standing out in all directions.

  ‘Mallin!’ he said. ‘What’s the meaning of this?’

  One of the dogs menaced me with a low growl, and I pushed past him. They recognised me and relaxed. I put Crowshaw’s living-room light on and led the way in.

  ‘I’ve been talking to Lovejoy,’ I said.

  ‘Have you got me out of bed to tell me that?’ he demanded angrily.

  Bed? What was that? I was hours away from mine.

  ‘That and a bit more. You interviewed Lovejoy twice. Maybe more. You had all the time in the world to talk to him, and you never spotted it.’

  ‘Spotted what, for heaven’s sake? Make sense, Mallin. You’re raving.’

  Maybe I was. Tired and depressed and out of patience. I tried to steady myself. I said:

  ‘The way things went between Gaines and Lovejoy. All that business about showing him how to fire the thing. And something you never heard at all. Gaines asked him how far away it would kill a man, and where to aim.’

  It stirred something in his eyes. He went and sat down and prodded the fire. ‘I didn’t know that. But if I had, I don’t see it would have been significant.’

  ‘It would if you followed it through.’ I couldn’t sit; I had to move around. ‘Gaines was rousing Lovejoy’s curiosity. He was making a gesture he knew would get back.’

  ‘Get back?’ He looked startled. ‘Get back where?’

  ‘Here, damn it,’ I cried. ‘To Paterson.’

  ‘But how could it do that?’

  ‘You never asked Lovejoy who’d sent Gaines to him.’ He suddenly saw what I meant, and he wasn’t happy. ‘I didn’t. Who?’

  ‘Drover, that’s who. Your Drover.’

  ‘Impossible.’

  ‘Then ask him. Ask him, when you’ve got time. Drover put him on to Lovejoy, so Gaines knew the whole thing would get back. Myra said Paterson had told her that her husband had bought a gun, but you never wondered how Paterson knew. If you’d found out, you’d have questioned Drover. But did you? No. You’d have found out some very funny things about Drover.’

  ‘Drover,’ he murmured. He seemed dazed.

  ‘Who do you think buried Gaines’s gun in the orchard?’

  ‘Oh… good Lord! Buried? Not Drover?’

  ‘Exactly. Drover. Drover buried that gun. And if you’d got that out of him, you’d have found the gun, and you’d have known Gaines owned his own gun, and knew how to re-load it, and could fire it. And maybe you’d have seen the reason for his ridiculous gesture in going to Lovejoy at all.’

  I was watching him crumble in front of me. He’d been proud of his knowledge that his actions had been justified. But now the pride was stripping off, layer by layer. I could have been sorry for him, only I was too busy being sorry for a poor devil called Neville Gaines.

  ‘And what was the reason?’ he said softly.

  ‘To send back a warning to Andy Paterson,’ I shouted. ‘That’s what. He couldn’t think what else to do. He was near to breaking, and he knew it, so he had to send back signals that he hoped were menacing. Why else would he go out for a second gun, when he already owned one?’

  ‘I didn’t know he owned one. Not till years later.’

  ‘Then you should have found out.’ I was trying to light a cigarette, but every time my lighter got near it, my hand had to take it out of my mouth for more talking. ‘Then maybe we’d have got a true picture of Neville Gaines. Everybody helping him! Drover hiding the gun; Myra saying nothing about him owning one. All very touching. They thought they were helping him. But Christ, they were digging his grave. With the full background—man, don’t you see it?—they’d have brought in something like temporary insanity. I don’t know. But he wouldn’t have hanged. He’d be alive now.’

  I let him absorb that. There was a pause long enough for me to get the cigarette going. Then I looked at him. He’d shrunk down into the chair.

  ‘Where,’ he whispered, ‘did Drover find Gaines’s gun?’

  I laughed. It sounded terrible. ‘In that cow byre of yours. Funny, isn’t it! Then you had to go and choose exactly the same place to plant yours.’

  ‘I chose it for a reason,’ he said with pathetic dignity.

  ‘Because it was Hutchinson who’d searched it.’

  ‘Deeper than that,’ he said eagerly, probing for some vestige of my good will. ‘It wasn’t a coincidence that I had Hutchinson searching the cow byre. Not by any means. We put the weakest men in the most unlikely places. Hutchinson couldn’t be trusted. So we put him in there.’

  ‘Oh fine. That’s dandy. So Gaines’s gun was found by Drover in the least likely place. I hope that makes you happy. You’re damned theorising was way up the creek.’

  ‘Mallin!’ He’d had enough.

  But I had to shout at somebody or I’d explode. ‘There had to be two guns. Very clever. But even that was based on a false premise, that Gaines couldn’t re-load. He’d got you fooled all ends up. Then you failed to dig deep enough into Lovejoy. You failed to uncover Drover as the connection, you failed to see it all as a gesture. Damn it, man, you failed all along the line.’

  He stared down into the depths of his own inadequacy. It was an ugly thing for him to have to face. I was surprised he could speak at all.

  ‘Is that all?’ he muttered.

  ‘It’s all for now.’ I turned away. ‘Don’t worry, I’ll find my own way out.’ I got to the door, had it open, then turned back. ‘One other thing. Are you listening?’ His head came up at last, and he was a poor bewildered old man. Oh, I was enjoying myself. ‘That gun, your precious find after three years of relentless toil—it hadn’t jammed after its three shots. Now you get back to bed and think that one out. And good luck to you.’

  Outside in the yard the thin rain pressed gently on my face. I looked up into it. It felt good and clean.

  ‘Good luck to you,’ I whispered.

  I hoped that Paul Hutchinson would be pleased with me. It was what he’d wanted, wasn’t it?

  It was twelve-forty. Late or not, I had to call on Elsa. But she’d be asleep by now—her beauty sleep. I drove fast for her place. She’d got beauty to spare.

  She was not asleep. There was a light on in the window that I knew belonged to the kitchen, and hearing the car she had the front door open before I reached it. She must have run.

  I don’t know what I’d expected. She was in a flowered dressing-gown and no make up, and looke
d so adorable that I couldn’t help smiling. I took her hands and spread them out and got her under the light.

  ‘Let me have a look at you.’

  ‘Now don’t be silly, David,’ she said, but she was happy. Then she touched my face tenderly. ‘You should be home and asleep. You look terrible.’

  ‘Going home,’ I promised her, and I let her lead me back into the kitchen.

  She had made herself some tea and was having sandwiches.

  ‘I couldn’t rest,’ she said. ‘I’m like a silly girl.’

  ‘I wouldn’t say silly.’

  ‘You can have a sandwich, and there’s plenty of tea.’

  So I had a sandwich and plenty of tea.

  ‘Promised I’d call,’ I said.

  ‘You didn’t come all the way from Birmingham for that!’

  ‘A Mallin promise is a promise. But I was quite close.’

  A shadow crossed her face. ‘That case.’

  ‘Just one item to polish up.’ I tried not to look at her.

  ‘But it’s after twelve!’

  ‘I know.’

  She moved out of the range of my eyes, and I couldn’t see what she was doing. I heard a cupboard door close. From behind me she spoke quite quietly.

  ‘It must mean a great deal to you.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I admitted, watching a tea leaf rotate. ‘Something that got started, and I’d like to finish it.’

  I turned. She was watching me with frowning attention, no emotion, no disturbance. This was the Elsa I knew and loved, the calm one, the practical one.

  ‘Get it done with,’ I suggested. ‘Out of the way.’

  ‘I know you, David. I know you very well. It’s dangerous, isn’t it?’

  ‘It could be. I’m not sure.’

  ‘We’re very nearly married. I could forbid it.’

  I thought about it. ‘I’m sorry, Elsa.’

  There was a sudden sparkle in her eyes. I was expecting a violent reaction, but she simply sat down opposite me.

  ‘David, you know I’m not going to stand in your way. Not ever. I didn’t want you to go into this thing, but you’re a stubborn man. Whatever you are I don’t want to alter, because I love you because of it—or in spite of it. But David, love, promise me something.’