Corpse Path Cottage

by Margaret Scutt

  ‘If it would help at all,’ said Amy confusedly, ‘I wouldn’t mind the whole village knowing.’

  The superintendent rose, picking up his hat. He seemed very large as he smiled down at her.

  ‘Don’t you worry,’ he said. ‘Everything will be all right.’ And I only hope that’s true, he added to his immortal soul.

  He was smiling to himself as he took his leave, but before he reached the gate, was looking thoughtful again. A few steps on he met PC Marsh, on his bicycle. The constable dismounted and straightened his tall figure.

  ‘Waiting for me?’ asked the Super.

  ‘Yes, sir. Phone message from Lake.’

  ‘Well?’

  ‘They cleaned up the handkerchief found with the revolver and found initials in the corner.’

  ‘What were they?’ asked White quickly.

  Marsh told him.

  ‘That convey anything to you?’

  Marsh told him again.

  ‘Well, well,’ said the Super.

  ‘Yes, sir,’ said PC Marsh.

  CHAPTER XXI

  ‘STILL THEY COME,’ SAID Mark. ‘Bobbies, bobbies all the way, and ne’er a criminal in sight. Unless, of course, you count me.’

  Mr Pulleyblank grinned, but his eyes were speculative.

  ‘Old man’s excited about something,’ he said softly.

  ‘Looks much as usual to me,’ said Mark.

  ‘Don’t you believe it. See the way he is tapping his thigh with his fingers? It’s a sure sign. And Marsh was after him just now, hell for leather, and he looks like the cat that swallowed the canary. Something’s up.’

  ‘I hope to God it is,’ muttered Mark. Personally, he was doubtful. White was certainly making that movement with his right hand, but it looked far more like absence of mind than excitement, and as for PC Marsh, his rosy countenance generally did show a mild contentment with life.

  ‘One more call to make,’ announced the Super as he reached the car. ‘You can wait here.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ said the driver, his eyes on the gently drumming hand.

  ‘I saw old Fairfax,’ said Mark conversationally.

  The Super looked round as if he had never seen him before. The large eyes of the constable also became fixed in an interested stare.

  ‘You saw him?’ queried White.

  ‘Why, yes. You told me to. About Mrs Shergold. Don’t you remember?’

  ‘Oh, that. It had slipped my memory for the moment. And is the lady back?’

  ‘No. He’s pretty sick about it. She isn’t coming back at all, it seems.’

  ‘Poor Mr Fairfax. Dear, dear.’ The fingers were tapping again.

  ‘Poor me, too. I shall have trouble enough to find anyone else,’ said Mark.

  ‘You’ll have to find yourself a wife, Mr Endicott.’

  PC Marsh uttered a short laugh, coloured, and gazed into the distance.

  ‘Very funny,’ said Mark, scowling.

  ‘I didn’t intend to be humorous,’ said the Super, giving his perspiring underling a dignified glance of reproof. ‘However, we mustn’t stay chatting here.’

  Pulleyblank swung around and watched the two stately figures disappear.

  ‘Oh, yes,’ he said with deep conviction. ‘No doubt about it, there’s something up.’

  * * *

  If Mr Fairfax had overheard the Super describe him as ‘poor’, he would have been in the most complete agreement. He felt that he had, like another gentleman, been most despitefully used. Left in the lurch with scarcely a word of apology, his good working ’ooman gone like a beautiful dream; he looked around the increasing disorder of his home and mourned. And it was not only in cleanliness that Mrs Shergold had shown her worth; her cooking, too, had been an inspiration and a joy. No extravagance, either, reflected Mr Fairfax, sadly shaking his patriarchal head. Well, it was over now. The lean days had returned, and for good. Working housekeepers in these degenerate days were like snow in harvest. Never, he felt, would he look upon her like again.

  He had lunched without zest on liver belonging to some animal unknown, which the butcher had handed to him as a pearl of great price. In the skilled hands of Mrs Shergold, it would have become a meal fit for a prince; under his own ministrations it had formed a knife-blunting crust on the outside whilst remaining revoltingly raw and red inside. Mr Fairfax possessed three teeth. He had bolted what he could not chew, and Nemesis, in the shape of internal pangs of anguish, was upon him. He looked like a Father Christmas who had lost his sleigh.

  He heard a tap on his door without enthusiasm. Not that feller Endicott again, he hoped. A nasty look he had given him; did he expect all the world to fall on his neck that day after the inquest? If Amy Faraday was fool enough to do it, that was up to her. Old maids would do anything that put them in the way of a man.

  The knock at the door was repeated, this time more forcibly.

  ‘All right, all right,’ said Mr Fairfax, wincing as the liver had its way with him, ‘bain’t I coming so fast as I can?’

  He opened the door upon the massive form of the Super, and his greenish pallor made him look a guilty man.

  ‘Mr Fairfax? I’m Superintendent White. I’d like a word with you, if I may.’

  ‘Step inside,’ said Mr Fairfax in a hollow voice.

  The Super followed him across a stone paved passage and into a stone paved room which, even on that blazing day, struck cold. Above the fire place hung an enlargement of the nuptials of Mr Fairfax, in which the gentleman himself looked cowed, his bride frightened, and the mother of the bride sternly triumphant. The room was sparsely furnished, and though clean wore a faint air of neglect. There was dust on the chair which Mr Fairfax pulled forward for his visitor, and the plush table cover had crumbs caught in its surface and hung askew.

  ‘What can I do for you, sir?’ asked Mr Fairfax, seating himself and speaking in a subdued voice.

  ‘As you know, I am investigating the murder of Mrs Laura Grey.’

  ‘I don’t know nothing about that,’ said Mr Fairfax, moving uneasily in his chair.

  ‘So we had imagined,’ said the Super, fixing him with a cold eye, ‘until this morning.’

  Mr Fairfax gaped, looking foolish and immensely surprised.

  He said breathlessly, ‘Here! What do ’ee mean by that?’

  ‘Just this, Mr Fairfax. The weapon from which the fatal shot was fired has now been discovered. Have you any idea where?’

  Mr Fairfax recovered his breath. A sly and unpleasing smile creased his pallid cheeks.

  ‘That’s easy. Some place nigh Corpse Path Cottage,’ he said.

  ‘How do you know that, Mr Fairfax?’

  ‘Stands to reason,’ said Mr Fairfax simply. ‘He — Endicott — shot her, didn’t he? Everybody knows that — ’cept, seemingly, the police.’

  He spoke recklessly. His pains were worse, and he hated all the world.

  ‘The police,’ said White slowly, ‘know something else. They know what was wrapped round the revolver when it was hidden.’

  Mr Fairfax, past caring, uttered a dolorous groan.

  ‘I want you to answer this carefully. Do you own a large white linen handkerchief with the initials J. F. hand-embroidered in the corner?’

  ‘Six,’ replied Mr Fairfax briefly.

  ‘Six?’

  ‘That’s what I said. My dear wife gave them to me for a Christmas box the year afore she died. Waste o’ good money, but she liked such foolishness.’ He broke off, laid a hand on his stomach and rumbled loudly. ‘Pardon. This here indigestion,’ he said.

  ‘Have a couple of these?’ said White, taking a small bottle from his pocket. ‘I use ’em myself.’

  Like a drowning man clutching a straw, Mr Fairfax took the proffered tablets. White saw the colour creep back to his cheeks. The old boy hadn’t been sprucing, then.

  ‘Better?’ he asked.

  Mr Fairfax nodded. ‘I was a bit short with you, sir, I’m afraid, but I was in mortal pain. I be no cook at the
best of times, and when a man’s worried into the bargain—’

  ‘Worried?’

  ‘Wouldn’t you be worried if your housekeeper as you depended on had gone and left you?’

  ‘I should, indeed. But going back to these initialled handkerchiefs — could I see them?’

  Mr Fairfax stared. ‘If you don’t mind my asking, whatever for?’

  ‘A handkerchief was found with the revolver and had evidently been wrapped round it. Those initials are in the corner.’

  The eyes and mouth of Mr Fairfax became three perfect Os. He breathed, ‘No!’

  ‘I assure you it is a fact.’

  ‘Well, then,’ said Mr Fairfax, coming to himself and turning purple with anger, ‘it can’t be one o’ mine. My six be upstairs in a box in the right-hand top drawer o’ the chest o’ drawers my wife’s mother give us for a wedding present. And that,’ he added, drawing breath and triumphantly clinching the matter, ‘were in February 1901.’

  ‘Yes. But a handkerchief bearing your initials was found.’

  ‘And what if ’twere? I suppose there be other folk whose names begin wi’ J. F. in the world. Circumstanttle evidence, that’s what it be. Trying to pin a thing on a feller—’

  ‘You just show me your six handkerchiefs,’ said White sternly, ‘instead of wasting your breath like this.’

  Mr Fairfax closed his lips and shot him a malevolent glance. He got up hastily.

  ‘Better come with me, hadn’t ’ee?’ he said bitterly. ‘When you’ve counted six good handkerchiefs for yourself, you mid stop doubting an honest man’s word.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said White gently. ‘Perhaps that would be best.’

  ‘Circumstanttle evidence!’ muttered Mr Fairfax and led the way up the stairs.

  The bedroom was dominated by a majestic double bed, with head and foot crowned by large balls of brass. The coverings had been pulled over it by an unskilled hand, and the brass was filmed with dust. Mr Fairfax, still bursting with indignation, stumped across the room to the mahogany chest, large and solid like the bed. He pulled open the top right-hand drawer. Good workmanship there, reflected the Super parenthetically — they don’t run so smoothly these days. A piercing odour of mothballs filled the room.

  ‘Come and see for yourself,’ invited Mr Fairfax.

  White crossed the room and looked over his shoulder. Two black ties, some rolled up woollen socks, a few khaki handkerchiefs, an enormous cashbox, a pair of black gloves and a mourning band — Mr Fairfax took out these articles one by one and laid them on the bed. There remained in the drawer a flat blue cardboard box.

  ‘Now,’ said Mr Fairfax, in a voice quivering with conscious righteousness, ‘you see for yourself. Six handkerchiefs, as she give them to me. See for yourself.’

  The Super raised the lid to see a neatly folded handkerchief, the topmost of a small pile kept in place by narrow strands of blue ribbon running from corner to corner of the box. In the corner the initials had been worked with painstaking care. The handkerchief had never been used.

  ‘Take ’em out,’ urged Mr Fairfax. ‘Take all six of ’em out and count ’em.’

  Mr White did as he was told. He said soberly, ‘There are five handkerchiefs here, Mr Fairfax.’

  There was a pause. Mr Fairfax, one hand clutching a brass knob, stood as if frozen. A clock on the mantelpiece made the agitated sound of its ticking fill the room.

  ‘Here,’ he said, coming suddenly to life. ‘Let me count. One mid be folded in t’other.’

  Squares of linen flapped like flags. Convinced at last, he sat heavily on the bed, dropping his hands on his knees. His face expressed a childlike bewilderment.

  ‘Five in the box, right enough,’ he said, ‘but there had ought to be six.’

  ‘Have you never used one?’ suggested the Super, watching him.

  ‘Never. That I do know. She give them to me that Christmas morning. “Here James,” she said, “good linen, and hand-embroidered wi’ my own hands. Fit for a lord,” she said, and I said, “naught but foolish waste o’ money for a working chap.” So ’twere, but I never should ha’ said it. I never would have if I’d aknown. A wick later she were gone, and I never had the heart to touch ’em. Never opened the box from that day to this.’

  He wagged his head with a kind of brooding melancholy, looking down at the varied articles on the bed. Suddenly he turned to the Super, and his face was changed and afraid.

  ‘Here,’ he said, ‘one o’ my handkerchiefs be gone.’

  The Super agreed.

  ‘And you found one like ’em wi’ the weapon.’

  ‘As far as we can say, identical with them.’ He was adding some remarks about checking up and identifying, but he saw that Mr Fairfax was working things out for himself.

  ‘The murderer had my handkerchief. Then you think,’ his voice cracked suddenly, ‘as I be the murderer?’

  ‘No,’ said the Super gravely. ‘I don’t think that at all.’

  ‘Don’t ’ee?’ said Mr Fairfax. He added surprisingly, ‘Put a power o’ work into those handkerchiefs she did, poor maid.’ Without the slightest warning, he put his hands to his face and began to cry.

  * * *

  Mr White brewed the tea himself, and according to his own standards. If his host was shocked to see the number of spoonfuls ladled into the pot he made no protest and sipped the resulting dark and sugary fluid with the best possible grace. Two large cupfuls were disposed of by each man before the Super settled down to business once more.

  ‘Feel better for that, don’t you?’ he remarked jovially. ‘I do, I know. My wife says I’m a terror on the ration.’

  ‘Mrs Shergold, she made ours go round wonderful well,’ said Mr Fairfax sadly. ‘There, I mid ha’ knowed she were too good to last.’

  ‘How long had she been with you?’

  ‘Middle of March she came. Morning after the affair at Corpse Path,’ said Mr Fairfax delicately, ‘she went. And by this morning’s post I get a card — no more.’

  He reached for a postcard which was pushed behind a leering china dog on the mantelpiece. White took it and gazed at it casually.

  There was no address or date. The few lines scrawled across it in an undistinguished hand said baldly enough: Sorry unable to return. Will send for things later. It was signed M. Shergold.

  ‘Yes, it’s pretty cool,’ said the Super looking up, ‘I should write and tell her so if I were you.’

  ‘How can I do that?’ asked Mr Fairfax reasonably. ‘I don’t know her address.’

  ‘I saw there was none on the card, but surely she gave you an address when she went?’

  ‘She did not. It came all of a rush, as you mid say. The letter come by the first post to say her sister needed her and by the next bus she were gone, for the few days, as I thought. Never dreamed I should need to use paper and ink on her for so short a time as that.’

  ‘I suppose not. Still, she hasn’t treated you well. How did you get her in the first place?’

  ‘Advertised for a working housekeeper in the Lake and District Courier. An expense, but someone I had to have. She answered, and I met her in town for an interview. All done proper and as it should be.’

  ‘Yes. Did you put your address on the advertisement or a box number?’

  ‘My address, of course. Didn’t want to make out I lived in town, did I?’

  The Super agreed. His right hand had begun a rhythmic tapping on his knee.

  ‘Right. So you interviewed her and engaged her. References?’

  ‘Three, and good ones too. From a vicar, a doctor, and a schoolmistress. All spoke most highly of her.’

  ‘Did you take up any of them?’

  ‘I gave them back to her, of course.’ Mr Fairfax looked somewhat offended.

  ‘I mean, did you write to any of the people to check up on the statements?’

  Mr Fairfax smiled pityingly. ‘Lord bless you, why should I want to do that? She was prepared to come and to take what I was minded to give.
No need to waste stamps on that.’

  No, you miserly old buzzard, thought the Super.

  ‘It’s always as well,’ he pointed out. ‘References have been faked before now.’

  ‘Well, I never thought to do it. You had only to look at her to know as there were nothing wrong.’

  ‘And yet, see how she is treating you now. Can you remember any names from the references?’

  ‘No, that I can’t. I didn’t clutter up my head wi’ none of it. They were all Londoners, and that’s the most I can tell ’ee.’

  ‘Londoners, were they? She came from London here? Why?

  ‘She said as she had been born and bred in the country and since her husband died she’d been wishful to get back.’

  ‘When did he die?’

  ‘She said two years ago.’

  ‘Yes. And she wrote to you before the interview. From what address?’

  Mr Fairfax looked blank. ‘That I can’t say.’

  ‘Can’t you remember? Didn’t you keep the letter?’

  ‘I did have it,’ said the badgered Fairfax defensively, ‘but she spring cleaned t’other day, and got rid o’ piles o’ stuff. How was I to know ’twould be wanted?’

  ‘Never mind. Can you remember what part of London?’

  ‘Putney, I can’t remember no more than that, and ’tis no manner o’ use for ’ee to ask me. Why be you keeping on about her, anyway? ’Tis the murderer as you should be after.’

  ‘You leave me to do my job in my own way,’ said the Super with perfect good humour. ‘I might be able to find this vanishing lady for you. She mentioned on her card ‘things’ left here. What are they?’

  ‘Best come up again,’ said Mr Fairfax resignedly.

  The room which had been Mrs Shergold’s was neat, bare and unwelcoming. In the built-in wall cupboard hung a solitary dress of cheap woollen material. A grey flannel dressing-gown drooped from a peg on the door.

  ‘She took a case with her, I suppose?’

  ‘Yes and wore her coat over a jacket and skirt. I told her she’d be hot enough before the day was done.’

  White turned his attention to the dressing chest which stood before the window. The bottom drawer yielded a selection of unseductive underclothes, the second a grey jumper and two blouses. The top drawer was empty, but the Super remained gazing into its depths as if it were a crystal in which he might read the answer to all his problems. He stood silent for so long that the pink face of Mr Fairfax came over his shoulder to be reflected, puzzled and inquisitive, in the glass.