“No, sir. Not a bit.”
“But our inquiries show he got tinned goods and chocolate from Polly … Polly … what’s her name?”
“Polly Duckett, you mean, as keeps the shop down the road?”
“That’s it.”
“Who told you that? Poor Polly’s a bit simple. She must have made up the tale. She never … Why, he daren’t have shown himself there. He was almost too scared to stir out of the Hall.”
“All the same, I have it on good authority, he got supplies from her.”
“Well, he was starvin’ first time I took him food. What with people prowlin’ the grounds and the police out for ’im, he daren’t risk it.”
“Very well. That will be all for the present, but, please, neither of you leave the village until I say so.”
“But I have the Carstonwood Christian Endeavour to speak to this afternoon. I can’t let them down.…”
“They’ll have to endeavour on their own, sir,” said Cromwell.
“No, no. You can go, sir. You’re on parole, though,” cut in Littlejohn.
“Thank you so much, Inspector. You have my word. And I’ll look after Mrs. Alveston, too. I’ll do all I can to help you.”
“I’m sure you will, sir.”
At the police station that evening they found Pennyquick making a list of licences due for collection. He was having his busy time with the local dogs. From the kitchen came the sound of singing again.
Oh, good old Jeff has gone to rest,
We know that he is free.
Disturb him not, but let him rest,
Way down in Tennesseeeeeeee.
The constable raised his eyes to heaven in apology.
“You know Polly Duckett, don’t you, Pennyquick?”
“Yes, sir. Poor girl. When her ’usband was killed in the war, she went right off her head. And her carryin’ his child. Born dead, it was.…”
“Does she ever open her shop, now?”
“At odd times, I think. You see, she ’as rather bad do’s now and then. Seized with fits o’ melancholy and stays in bed. The shop’s shut then for days.”
“What does she sell?”
“Eh? Oh! … Sort o’ general stores it was. Quite a nice little business … enough to keep ’er goin’, like, till Jim was killed. Then, she got behavin’ so strange, people stopped goin’. She’s little to sell now and I guess she’d give it up, only, you see, sir, cottages are impossible to get and, if she gave up this place, blest if I know where she’d get another roof over her ’ead.”
The singing in the kitchen had ceased and was followed by the ominous hush which told that Mrs. Pennyquick had heard the arrival of visitors and was either listening-in to what was going on in the next room, or, with her usual good-heartedness, preparing yet more hospitality for her visitors. She soon appeared, flushed a bit and rather shy, bearing a large tray of sandwiches and tea.
“This is really awfully kind of you, Mrs. Pennyquick. It’s not fair of us eating your rations like this.…”
“We’ve plenty just at present. The girls’ rations, left behind.…”
“A proper old law-breaker, is ma,” chuckled Pennyquick. “A proper disgrace to the Force, she is.…”
“You mind yer own business, Andrew Pennyquick. If I didn’t look after the food, you’d soon ’ave somethin’ ’arsh to say when you come in off the beat.… Proper old eater out of house and home, is my ’usband, sir.… Sugar?”
“We’ve just been talking about poor Polly Duckett, Mrs. Pennyquick. Sad case.”
“Very sad. A nice girl when she was little. ’Ead full o’ lovely curls and as nice in ’er ways.… Now … Quite wrong in ’er head some days and gets queer notions. Can’t sort out ’er rationed goods at all. Points and sweets coupons … well … ’er suppliers gave it up as a bad job long since, and now she doesn’t sell points stuff and sweets any more.…”
“Just a minute, Mrs. Pennyquick. I’ll tell you and your husband, in greatest confidence, that I was informed she supplied a lot of tinned goods and chocolates to Alveston when he was in hiding. He frightened her to death and made her give them to him.”
“That’s all wrong, sir. Whoever told you that, wasn’t right. Why, she hasn’t hardly any goods at all in the shop now. Besides, if Alveston came out at night, he’d never get in. She shutters up and you never saw how many bolts and bars on the doors.…”
“Does she ever stir out, Mrs. Pennyquick?”
“Now and then. But she mostly shuns people. I’m one of the few she’ll let in the ’ouse. You see, sir, I had to look after her when her poor dead baby was born. She’d nobody else and, one day, Andrew—that’s my ’usband—Andrew, passin’ the shop, heard groans from inside and come and brought me. She’ll do anythin’ for me since.”
“Will she be up at this time?”
“Nearin’ ten. Maybe. She often sits by the embers, thinkin’ of happier days, no doubt. One day, they’ll have to take ’er away if she goes on as at present. Quite a good-looking girl, too. Ought to get ’erself another man and start afresh.”
“Mind if we go across and try? Perhaps she’d let us in if you were with us.”
“I don’t mind.…”
Mrs. Pennyquick put on a heavy coat and a little navy-blue beret, given to her at Christmas by one of her girls. Her husband solemnly put on his tunic, helmet and belt, tested his torch, and away they all went.
Polly Duckett’s place lay just through the village on the main road to the Hall. A wooden bungalow affair, with a large window and a kind of veranda, beneath which the former owner had once spread little tables and chairs and sold soft drinks and ice cream. Polly had let this appendage fall into decay, like much of the rest of the place.
With the help of the constable’s lamp, they found their way to the hut. There were lights on downstairs and the chimney was smoking. The bobby rapped vigorously on the door. There were noises inside and then feet approached the door. Nobody spoke, but Polly sounded to be shooting more bolts and bars to hold the door better and protect herself.
“Polly.… It’s me. Martha Pennyquick. I want to see you.”
A pause. Then an excited and pleasant contralto voice answered.
“It’s so late, Martha. Won’t it do mornings? I’m almost goin’ to bed.”
“My husband’s here, too, Polly, and the gentlemen from London. They want to ask you somethin’.…”
“Oh! …”
A gasp of terror, which seemed to awake some other occupant of the place to action. Heavy feet joined those of the owner of the shack, a muffled argument, and then a man’s voice.
“What ye want with Polly at this hour? Can’t you leave ’er in peace? Be off with you all, and see her proper in the light o’ day.…”
“Sid Chapell!” gasped the bobby in astonished tones, and his wife clicked her tongue against her teeth.
“Yes, it’s me, Andrew Pennyquick, and not ashamed of it either. It’s you as ought to be ashamed, disturbin’ respectable folk at this hour o’ night.”
“Whatever yore doin’ there, Sid, this is important. It’s a serious matter about the death o’ Alveston. Open up, lad.”
The door was slowly opened after a perfect pandemonium of chains and bars being loosed and there, silhouetted by the lamplight, stood a slim, scared-looking woman with a huge, corduroy-clad countryman standing protectively by.
“Can we come in?”
The procession at a signal moved indoors.
But first, Sid had something to say. He was a shy man of few words, but with an air of solemn integrity about him.
“This ain’t fair …” he was beginning to say.
Pennyquick looked a bit tickled, now that the strain had been removed.
“Doin’ a bit o’ courtin’, Sid?”
“An’ wot if I am? It’s not a police matter, is it? Everybody ’ud a known long since, only Polly wouldn’t …”
“It didn’t seem right, Martha, with me ’usband hardly cold in his gr
ave, but Sid was so perseverin’.…”
She was quite a good-looking, dark girl, rather haggard, however, from grief and worry, and bewildered from lack of proper care. She addressed herself to Mrs. Pennyquick, ignoring the rest.
“Rubbish, Polly. You want a nice man to mind you, my girl. And Sid’s the one for it. You’ve pined long enough. It’s time you seeked the better things o’ life again. Your mournin’s over. Time for Sid to set things right.”
“You reely think so, Martha?”
“Of course.…”
She smiled as though a load had been removed and Sid, the cause of it all, grew hot and stood first on one foot and then on the other.
“An’ now, maybe, when you’ve all done, Polly an’ me can talk proper. Glad you made ’er see sense, Mrs. Pennyquick. I’ve a nice cottage and garden all of me own and four pounds a week. Since me owld mother died, I’ve been terrible lonely.…”
“Ahem.… Well … wot about our business?” interrupted Pennyquick.
“I just want to ask you, Mrs. Duckett, if you saw Alveston during his recent stay here and if you gave him any tinned stuff and chocolate.…”
“’Ere, wot’s all this? Polly wouldn’t …”
Sid was getting a bit nettled.
“You don’t interfere, Sid. Inspector Littlejohn just wants to know. No offence intended. Let the Inspector and Polly talk, if you please, Sid.…”
“No, he never, sir.… I never see him at all. And as for tins and sweets—no. I run out of them long since. I got all mixed up in me points and the wholesalers said until I got ’em fixed, they wouldn’t send any more.”
“I’ll fix ’em,” said Sid. “Though when we’re wed, which won’t be long, they’ll be no more servin’ pounds o’ butter and quarters o’ tea for Missis Sid Chapell. There won’t that.…”
“Tell me, Mrs. Duckett, have you had a visit from Miss Fothergill lately?”
“No. Haven’t seen her for weeks, sir.”
“H’m. Well … that’s all, thanks. Sorry to disturb you.…”
“That’s all right, sir. And you do think it’ll be all right, Martha? They won’t talk about me as a bad lot in the village?”
“Bad lot! You, Polly. O’ course they won’t. You teck and wed Sid ’ere as soon as vicar’ll put up the banns for ye. Bad lot, indeed! Ought to be ashamed to think sich things.”
And with that Mrs. Pennyquick kissed Polly. The bobby, thinking something was expected of him as well, wrung Sid heartily and silently by the hand and, with that, they left them to their secret courting.
EIGHTEEN
A WARRANT AT LAST
THEY were all back at the Pennyquicks’ and the bobby’s wife had made yet another load of sandwiches and tea.
“I’m ’ungry, luv,” Pennyquick had said when they got back and as his wife, knowing the best way to a bobby’s heart, had further stocks in the larder, she did her best to appease him.
It was eleven o’clock, but they all felt too excited to part.
“What was all that about Miss Fothergill, sir?” asked the perplexed constable.
“She told me Polly had said Alveston had been round and taken her supplies and told her he’d murder her if she split on him. She also said I must take her word and not pester Polly for confirmation, because she’d enough trouble as it was and any further strain would drive her mad.”
“Now why could she ’a done that, sir?” muttered Pennyquick through a mouthful of bread and ham.
Cromwell took from his pocket a pipe, the exact replica of Littlejohn’s own new one. He’d been fortunate enough to find one in Thorncastle. He filled up from a pouch containing his chief’s blend of tobacco and lit up with slow, thoughtful puffs. Things were beginning to move at last! He hoped they wouldn’t be long, for he was heartily fed up with Cobbold and all in it, present company excepted, of course. He drank his good cup of tea, wondering if it would all be settled before the London pantomime season ended. He’d promised the wife and kids.…
“It seems to me,” Littlejohn was saying, “I’ve taken Miss Fothergill a bit too much on trust. She gave me a lot of information which, coming as she said from her brother’s records and hence professional secrets, I mustn’t divulge. But why lie to me about Alveston and the tinned goods?”
Cromwell removed his pipe and emitted a cloud of smoke.
“Could it be that up to then, we didn’t know that Alveston was in the neighbourhood and that was her way of telling us. Suppose she’d seen him, why not tell us direct? Why lead us to him by a cock-and-bull story about Polly Duckett?”
Pennyquick hastily emptied his mouth of his eighth sandwich.
“’Ow if she was protectin’ Mrs. Alveston? She’s always befriended Mrs. Alveston, sir. You see, Miss Fothergill went up to the ’all quite a lot in the old days, and Mary Ann Alveston’s the last o’ the old staff, except my missus. That’s so, ain’t it, ma?”
He shouted the last sentence loudly and thus brought his wife back to the room from the kitchen where she was still busy.
“What was you sayin’?”
“Miss Fothergill was a great friend o’ Mrs. Alveston. Sort o’ befriended her in her trouble?”
“Yes. The Fothergills ’ad very ’appy days at the Hall. That was, until their trouble.… Poor Dr. Fothergill.”
“What are you talkin’ about, ma?”
“Didn’t you know, Andrew? I thought you’d know all there was to know about this village.”
“Now, don’t yew start bein’ sarcastical, ma. This is very serious.…”
The bobby gravely regarded his better half, who returned his stare rebelliously.
“Servants in a big house of’en get to know more than those as we used to call our betters. And if some policemen would tell their wives a bit more, instead of keepin’ their business to themselves, they might get to know more.…”
With this, Mrs. Pennyquick gave first her husband and then Littlejohn and Cromwell an artful feminine smile. The bobby looked to be growing hot and cold with shame.
“Don’t talk like that in front of strangers … or rather friends from Scotland Yard, ma. It’s not right.”
“Well, it’s not right you goin’ here, there and everywhere seekin’ information and clues, when all the time they’re under your own roof!”
Poor Pennyquick looked at his wife in dumb amazement. He’d never seen her like this before. He absently took up another ham sandwich and slowly fed it under his large moustache.
“I could ’ave told you a lot about Dr. Fothergill and his sister. And now that Mr. Granville and Alveston’s dead and I’m free to tell things I overheard once and swore to Knapp on me Bible I’d never speak so long as they was alive, I can say somethin’ about Phyllis Alveston as well.”
“Well … Get on with it, ma. Wot ’ave you to tell?”
Pennyquick sounded kind and tolerant; the husband humouring his missus.
“It’s funny how you was tellin’ me in bed last night as you’d found Phyllis’s mother. I knew all that meself. But I was surprised you paid so little attention to ’er father. ‘A married man as went to the war and got killed,’ you said. That was just a story by the family to ’ush up the scandal. Phyllis Alveston bore the right name, because Alveston was her real father. Miss Margaret Salter was ’er mother!”
The constable threw up his hands and looked ready to make allowances on account of the late hour.
“Now look ’ere, ma.…”
“Please let her go on, Andrew …” said Littlejohn.
The bobby grew red with pride. To his dying day he’d remember that hour. Littlejohn had called him by his Christian name! Things were indeed looking up!
“I’d better begin at the beginnin’. You must admit, sir, that whatever plots you find on the pictures or in the underworlds of London, our villages is just as good. So, there! In ’is young days, Alveston was quite a good-looking lad, fond of the girls and with takin’ ways with him. He used to take Miss Margaret out ridin’. Teachi
n’ her, he said, or that’s what he was supposed to do. She was lovely and he must ’ave lost his head and made love to ’er. She was, at the time, a bit of a wild thing. Much given to readin’ what was then called modern and advanced novels, but which our girls now say isn’t much, but flat and dull. Any way, they was quite an influence then and forbidden to nice young ladies. Alveston must ’ave swept ’er off her feet. Phyllis was the result, an’ you know how she came to the Alveston home.”
“Is that true, ma, or jest gossip?”
“You’ve lived with me long enough to know I don’t tell lies, Andrew Pennyquick, and I wouldn’t pass on gossip about the Family. It’s true: every word. Dr. Fothergill was attendin’ at the Hall at the time. Miss Margaret never told anyone who the father was, but, at the lyin’-in, she got delirious and spoke it out. I was there and Knapp and Dr. Fothergill. It was then I swore to Knapp. As for Dr. Fothergill … well … he wasn’t a young man, but he was fond of Miss Margaret. That was why he stayed a bachelor. You’d only to look at ’is face when she came in the room. He adored ’er.”
“Well, well, ma. I never did.…”
“When it was all over and the doctor expectin’ to be called any time to Mrs. Alveston … Alveston’s own wife, mind you … he met Alveston in the great park. The doctor was on ’is horse and with his huntin’ crop ’e struck Alveston down with it, and when Alveston got up again, he struck him down again. Three times ’e did it, till Alveston stayed where ’e was on the ground. Then, he left ’im, all covered with blood. I saw it all from the window.…”
“You don’t say, ma …?”
“A week later, after Alveston’s baby was born dead, Dr. Fothergill ’ad been on a late call and, coming home in the dark, somebody set on ’im and beat him up. No doubt who it was. It was Alveston. But only us at the Hall knew, because only us had seen the other fight. And we couldn’t say anything on account of Miss Margaret. Poor Dr. Fothergill never got over the rough handlin’ they gave ’im. The thing was hushed up, but not long after, he fell dead in his sister’s arms.…”
The Case of the Headless Jesuit Page 21