The Casebook of Jonas P. Jonas and Other Mysteries

by E. X. Ferrars

  Then one morning he met Everard Crabbe.

  They met in the Coach and Horses when Hassall had just made up his mind that after a drink and a sandwich he would give up and drive back to London. There was no one else in the bar but the landlord, who came and went, attending to their wants but leaving Hassall and Crabbe mostly to themselves. Crabbe was sitting on a stool at the bar. He was a quiet-looking, shabby man of about forty, with a deeply lined, nervous face, scanty brown hair and deep-set, watchful blue eyes. He watched Hassall for some minutes before he spoke to him.

  Then he said, “Good morning. My name’s Crabbe – Everard Crabbe.”

  Very faintly a bell tinkled in Hassall’s mind. He had a feeling that he had heard the name sometime, but he could not remember where.

  “Good morning. Mine’s Peter Hassall,” he replied.

  “I hear you’ve been asking questions about Dr. Armiger,” Crabbe said.

  It surprised Hassall to hear the dead man referred to as Dr. Armiger. In general the village had denied him the status of doctor, on the grounds that the title belonged only to members of the medical profession.

  “Yes, but I haven’t got very far with them,” he said.

  “Not police, are you?” Crabbe said. “Not after all this time.”

  “No, I’m a writer. I’m doing a series of articles on forgotten murders.”

  “Ah, that’s what I thought. You’ve got the look. Possibly I could help you a bit. Not much, I’m afraid. I had some theories of my own at the time, but not based on anything you could call evidence. But if you’d be interested...” He paused hopefully, a lonely man, probably, badly in need of someone to talk to.

  Hassall did not think that anything very useful would come out of it, but he was in no hurry and Crabbe’s glass was empty. Offering him a drink, he found that Crabbe’s preference was for a double whisky.

  Picking up his glass, he continued, “I hadn’t been living here very long when it all happened. Only three or four years. That’s nothing in a place like this. And I only knew Armiger casually. But talk gets around and everyone knew he’d a pretty good opinion of himself as a gardener. Not that he’d ever done much gardening before he came here, so far as anyone could make out, but he was going to rely on books and science. He’d been Director of some agricultural research station somewhere – you probably know that – and he was going to show the rest of us a thing or two. Of course, the old people laughed at him. There wasn’t anyone who could teach them anything. But it didn’t worry him and he went to work and he was a very hard worker, they all admitted that, and he soon had things in what had just been a cabbage patch looking very promising. Of course, he didn’t mind how much money he spent. He ordered expensive varieties of plants and all kinds of fertilisers and so on and he took no notice of any advice he was given. Given half a chance, he’d lecture you for an hour on what you ought to be doing yourself. A very opinionated man.”

  “So he wasn’t popular,” Hassall said.

  “Well, not exactly, no. Not that he ever did anyone any harm. That’s to say, until his carnations were stolen. That’s when the trouble began. Seems they were something very special, from some very special grower. I met him the day after it happened and he was choking with fury. Someone had come into his garden during the night and pinched the whole lot he’d just planted. He said he’d have his revenge. But there, you see, he was up against a difficulty, because just how do you recognise your own carnation plants when half the people in the neighbourhood have them in their garden? Not quite such remarkable ones, perhaps, but until they come into bloom, how are you going to distinguish one from another? I pointed that out to him and he muttered, “Just wait and see,” and walked on, muttering to himself. I didn’t like the sound of it much, but what could I do? I didn’t really believe he’d do anything.”

  “I’ve been told he had a violent temper,” Hassall said.

  “Oh, that’s certain,” Crabbe agreed. “But he also had patience, and that’s a dangerous mixture, you know. It gives you the makings of a vengeful man. Vindictive and vengeful.” He drank some of his whisky. “He was both, as it turned out. We all thought he’d forgotten about it, but in fact he was just waiting for the annual flower show in the village to see who entered carnations. And there he recognised his own straight away. Anyway, they were the only ones in the show of the right variety and colour. And they won first prize. Not that that’s what he was interested in. He simply wanted the name of the man who’d entered them. It was Albert Riddle. He worked at that garage you’ll have passed as you came into the village, and he happened to be a quite near neighbour of Armiger’s. And the night after the show Armiger went into Riddle’s garden and poured buckets of weedkiller over his lettuces and peas and beans. Very special weedkiller a man like Armiger could know all about, that makes the ground you put it on sterile for four years.”

  “But how did anyone know he’d done it, if he did it at night?” Hassall asked.

  “He was seen,” Crabbe said. “A couple of boys, coming home late from a dance in town, saw it all happen. Not that they understood what old Armiger was doing, watering Riddle’s garden for him in the middle of the night, and they never thought of trying to stop him, but when everything in Riddle’s garden went black and shrivelled up and died, and he got very drunk in here one evening and made a scene, saying someone in the village must have the evil eye, because he’d never seen anything like it, they told him what they’d seen Armiger doing, and like Armiger before him, Riddle swore he’d have his revenge. I was very much more worried than I’d been when Armiger said the same thing, because when Riddle got drunk he could be very violent. He’d been in the magistrates’ court for it more than once, it wasn’t just talk. So I thought someone ought to warn Armiger.”

  “Which you did,” Hassall said.

  “Yes, and that’s when I learnt it was true about the weed-killer,” Crabbe replied. “He told me about it, said he’d worked on producing it himself, chuckled and said that would teach Riddle. Only Miss Armiger was worried when I told them the kind of man Riddle was and said she wished her brother would learn to forget and forgive occasionally. But he was crowing with triumph and said he’d still a trick or two up his sleeve if he had any more trouble from Riddle. And that night he had it. Riddle got into his garden and cut down a very lovely birch tree in it. Armiger had planted some other young trees after moving into the cottage, but the birch was the only mature one he had, and there it was in the morning, sawn off near the bottom, lying flat on the grass.”

  “Did someone see that happen too, or how did they know Riddle did it?” Hassall asked.

  “No, no one saw it,” Crabbe said, “but who else would have done a thing like that? It was sheer malice, you see. If the tree had been stolen we might have said it was the gypsies, taking it to saw up into logs and sell them. But there was something defiant about the way it had just been left lying there. Everyone knew it was Riddle.”

  “And what did Armiger do?”

  “Nothing.”

  Hassall raised his eyebrows. “Was that in character?”

  “No, it wasn’t, that’s just the point I was coming to,” Crabbe said. “It wasn’t, and I personally found something very disturbing about that. I’ve told you Armiger was a patient man and a vindictive one and I couldn’t help remembering what he’d said about having a trick or two up his sleeve. I felt he’d something in store for Riddle which he wouldn’t find at all nice when it happened, something even worse, perhaps, than having his garden sprayed with weed-killer. But nothing happened until the pigs got into it.”

  “Pigs?” Hassall said. “Armiger let some pigs into Riddle’s garden?”

  “So it was thought.”

  “That doesn’t sound to me like Armiger’s style.”

  “Exactly. That’s what I said immediately. But no one would listen to me. The pigs belonged to a man called Deakin who owned the field behind Riddle’s cottage. Deakin lived in a shack of sorts in the middle of
the field and grew vegetables for market and kept a few chickens and pigs, and one night the pigs knocked down the fence round Riddle’s garden and rooted up most of the things he’d got left in it and trampled down the rest. The place was a ruin. And everyone said it was Armiger who’d broken down the fence and made sure the pigs got in.”

  “But you didn’t believe that.”

  “No, as you said, it wasn’t Armiger’s style. He was a fastidious man, subtle, cunning. If all Riddle’s roses had suddenly developed blight, or his apples had all suddenly fallen off his trees, or something of that sort, I might have thought Armiger was at the bottom of it. But I’ve always believed the pigs got into Riddle’s garden by themselves. There was an old sow among them and old sows, as you probably know, are very belligerent, very destructive, quite dangerous, really. I thought the whole affair was Riddle’s own fault, for not keeping his fence in better order. But he was sure Armiger was responsible, that’s the important thing. He wouldn’t listen to reason. He breathed fire. He swore again he’d have his revenge. And only a week later Armiger was found dead near the letterbox, with his skull battered in.”

  At this point the landlord, who had been lingering behind the bar, finding small jobs to do in the way of polishing glasses and rearranging the sandwiches under a bell-jar, as if he wanted to hear what the two men were saying to one another, caught Hassall’s eye and gave him a swift wink.

  Hassall gave no sign of having observed it.

  “So what you’re telling me,” he said, “is that Riddle was the man who murdered Armiger, it wasn’t the boys on the motorcycles at all.”

  “No, no, you mustn’t jump to conclusions like that,” Crabbe replied quickly. “All I’m telling you about is a sequence of events. It’s just as possible that Riddle didn’t kill Armiger, however murderously he was talking, as that Armiger didn’t let the pigs into Riddle’s garden.”

  “Logically, I’m sure you’re right. But what did everyone believe?”

  Crabbe gave a grave shake of his head. “I’m afraid I must admit I don’t really know much about it. As it happened, I wasn’t very well just about then. I didn’t go out much. A virus, the doctor said. There was a lot of it about the village at the time.”

  “What I don’t understand, if what you’re telling me is true,” Hassall said, “is why the police didn’t look into the conflict between the two men. Didn’t they even suspect Riddle?”

  “Perhaps they did. I don’t know. Anyway, they didn’t find out anything conclusive.”

  “So it was a victory of brawn over brains. You know, I find that depressing.”

  “Ah, as to that, I wouldn’t be too sure...” Crabbe paused. Gazing into the distance, he fingered his glass, which drew Hassall’s attention to the fact that it was empty.

  He had it refilled.

  “What do you mean?” he asked.

  “Well, only a few days after Armiger’s death, Riddle died, you see,” Crabbe said. “Isn’t that a remarkable thing?”

  “Well, I don’t know. People do die, don’t they? What was there remarkable about Riddle’s death?”

  “Nothing, on the surface. He had this virus I told you was going about the village. As a matter of fact, he’d had it for a few weeks, off and on, before Armiger’s death. Couldn’t seem to shake it off. Gastric trouble, pains in his joints and so on. Just the same as I got, only worse. Old Dr. Turner, who was still in practice here at the time, said it was a virus. That’s what they say about everything they can’t diagnose nowadays, isn’t it? And they give you pills and if they don’t work they give you some more of a different colour and in the end you probably have to get well on your own, just as you always have. But Riddle couldn’t get well. He got steadily worse. And the worse he felt, the worse his temper got. The pigs getting into his garden was the last straw. He was like a maniac the last few days of his life. He may or he may not have attacked Armiger – I have no evidence on that point whatever – but I know he was in a terrible state and would have been capable of anything.”

  Hassall gave Crabbe a puzzled look. He was eyeing Hassall with his bright, watchful stare, as if to see how his story was affecting him.

  “But are you implying that Armiger was somehow responsible for Riddle’s condition?” Hassall asked. “You had this virus yourself. You’re not suggesting that Armiger managed to give the whole village some mysterious infection.”

  “Of course not, no.”

  “Then what do you mean?”

  Crabbe frowned broodingly into what was left of his whisky. “As I said before, it’s just a sequence of events. There may be nothing more to it than that. But I’ve given the matter a lot of thought and sometimes I can’t help feeling there’s a pattern in those events. I’ll have to begin by making a confession. I stole a cucumber from Riddle’s garden.”

  “A cucumber?” For the first time Hassall began to wonder how many drinks Crabbe had had before he himself had arrived at the Coach and Horses.

  “Yes, a ridged cucumber,” Crabbe replied. “The kind you can grow in the open. It was a hot summer that year, you may remember, and he had a particularly fine crop. One of the few things that hadn’t been spoilt by Armiger’s weed-killer or the pigs. But Riddle was dead, you see, and it seemed a pity they should go to waste.”

  “Just a minute,” Hassall said. “When was this? How soon after Riddle died?”

  “It was the evening after the funeral. Several of us had been to it and we came in here afterwards to have a drink, and one drink led to another, as it tends to when you’re feeling low, as you can’t help doing after a funeral, and by the time we left we were all fairly drunk. There were about five of us, I think. I remember we started singing some hymn or other when we started home, feeling in a religious state of mind, and we passed Riddle’s cottage, which we knew was empty, because his wife had gone to stay with her sister, and there were those cucumbers, looking fat and fine and tempting, where we could see them from the road, because there was only a low stone wall along the front of the garden. And someone, it may have been me, suggested we should nip in and help ourselves, so that’s what we did. I took mine home and my wife and I had some of it in a salad that evening. And next morning we were both of us down with that virus.”

  “Mr. Crabbe,” the landlord interrupted, “I’ve told you I went down with that virus myself and I didn’t have any cucumber.”

  “Coincidence.” Crabbe’s enunciation was not quite as clear as it had been. “Yours could have been a different kind. It could have come from anywhere. People coming and going in here all the time from all over the country, you could have picked it up from any of them. It’s a fact though, until my wife and I finished that cucumber we didn’t begin to get well.”

  “What about the other four who were with you, singing hymns after the funeral, and who helped themselves to cucumbers?” Hassall said. “Did they get ill?”

  Crabbe wagged a finger at him. “They did, they did, that’s just what I was going to tell you. Every one of them was smitten next day by that virus. But none of us thought anything about it at the time. We took Dr. Turner’s pills and gradually we got well. And I don’t suppose I’d have given the matter another thought if I hadn’t gone round one day to help Miss Armiger with her garden. Of course she couldn’t cope with it herself and it was turning into a wilderness, so I offered to go and mow her lawn for her. The lawn-mower was kept in the garden shed. I went in to get it and there on a shelf I saw two things, a sprayer and a can of some insecticide. But even then the penny didn’t drop. After all, insecticide is a normal enough thing for any gardener to have around. But later, somehow, I got to brooding about it. I thought of the things they tell you about insecticides. D’you know, there was a time when brewers used to spray it on their hops, until it turned out that if you drank eight hundred gallons of beer it would kill you....” He looked gloomily into his nearly empty glass.

  “You brood too much, Mr. Crabbe,” the landlord said. “Now why don’t you go home and
have a bit of lunch? Your missus’ll be expecting you.”

  “That’s right, she will.” Crabbe finished his drink and got to his feet. He was not quite steady on them. “Nice to have met you, Mr. – Mr. – ?”

  “Hassall,” Hassall said. “But just a minute. What was it in the end that made you think Armiger had been spraying poison over Riddle’s cucumbers?”

  “The way you jump to conclusions!” Crabbe exclaimed. “Have I said that’s what he did?”

  “It’s what you implied.”

  Crabbe shook his head. “What I’ve been telling you is just a sequence of events. You can make what you like of it, so long as you don’t quote me. I can rely on you not to quote me, can’t I? I always regard my conversation as strictly copyright.”

  “Very well,” Hassall agreed. “But what was the next event in the sequence?”

  “Well, something made me think I’d better take that bottle of insecticide to a chemist friend of mine and get him to tell me what it was, and he said it had some chemical in it called fluoro-phosphonate, which is lethal to things like aphids and in big enough quantities to humans, though it’s quite harmless to plants. So d’you know what I did? I got into Riddle’s garden again and cut all the remaining cucumbers and put them in a bonfire – just to be on the safe side, you know, not because I seriously thought there was anything the matter with them. And so that was the end of that.”