They skirted the vast dark mass of Castle Rushen, rising monolithically above sleeping and dimly lighted Castletown, and turned off on the old familiar country road.
Not a sound in Grenaby but the rustle of the trees, the rush of the stream under the bridge, the hooting of an odd owl, and the distant barking of dogs. Two worlds a few miles apart. Douglas, all lights and gaiety; and the hidden village already asleep.
Knell was strangely silent. As a policeman, he wasn't supposed to be superstitious or afraid. But, as a Manxman, he had other feelings in his blood from days gone by, an inheritance from ancestry, remembrance of stories told round fires long ago. Driving on the lonely highway, with deserted crofts and gaunt ruined homesteads, the tholtans, etched against the moon, and with the silent fields of Ballamaddrell and the wastelands around Quayle's Orchard and Moainey Mooar stretching out to the lonely hills, he shuddered.
Knell had never read of Kipling's 'oldest land, wherein the Powers of Darkness range', but he knew all about it by the way the hair rose above the nape of his neck!
The Archdeacon insisted on Knell's coming in for supper, and they told him the little they'd found out since they'd left him, over sandwiches and coffee.
It had been a long day for Littlejohn, the culmination of a series of late nights and over-eating in Dublin. He could hardly keep his eyes open. Add to that the air trip, the drive to and from Douglas, the promenade, the lights, the laughter. . . . And on top of it all, Uncle Fred. Quite a day!
The telephone bell rang. Maggie Keggin entered; she wasn't at all pleased.
'It's for Inspector Knell. I don't know why, but whenever he comes here there's always commotions. . . . Bells ringin', stoppin' up late at nights, murders bein' done. It's as if the place is bewitched, as though somebody had put the Eye on us. . . . It's Douglas police on the telephone, and I'm goin' to my bed. So, I'll wish you all good night and I hope you sleep well, though I have my doubts about it.'
Knell was quick there and quick back. He looked pleased with himself.
'Somebody's claimed Uncle Fred! The owner of a boardinghouse just off Broadway, where he lodged, heard there'd been a murder on the prom, and when his lodger didn't turn up for tea or supper, he reported it. Just after we'd left, he called at the police-station.'
'It took him long enough!'
'Well, they're busy in the high season. They can't pretend to be counting heads all the time. Trimble, that's the man's name. He's identified the body. So now we know what he's called and where he lives. That's a start, at any rate.'
Knell rubbed his long, bony hands together in a kind of energetic glee.
'What is he called?'
'Sorry. In the excitement, I'd quite forgotten. Fred Snook. . . .'
Snook! What a name! It seemed to spoil it all. Littlejohn much preferred 'Uncle Fred'. It suited the man in the panama far better. The Superintendent had had an Uncle Fred of his own once, and had almost adopted the murdered man as a relative. It added a bit of homely incentive to the affair. Now . . . Fred Snook. . . . Just a name on a case-file. . . . Well, well. . . .
They saw Knell off in the moonlight and then talked a bit more. Littlejohn rang up his wife, thinking again in sleepy mood, of the cable crossing the ocean above strange fish, subterranean rocks and caves, and the lost isles and cities of which the Archdeacon had told him legends, the Manxman's Hy Brasils, which rose once a year from the mists and the bells of which you could sometimes hear across the still sea.
'I've found another case waiting here for me, Letty. . . . A man called Fred Snook murdered right on the promenade at Douglas in the middle of a crowd . . . Yes. . . Snook. . . .'
All he could hear as he got ready for bed was the ticking of the clock in the hall and the creak of old timbers settling down for the night. He opened the window wide and muffled sounds entered from the moonlit countryside. The river and the trees again and the rustle and squeak of wild things. Grenaby, where many waters meet, was a haunted place. Large spectral cats with flaming eyes, the Purr Mooar or great pig, fairy music. . . . Littlejohn listened, yawned, and climbed into his large four-poster. Only one thing haunted him. . . . The face under the panama hat . . . . And a name. Fred Snook. It didn't fit. It was silly. . . .
He fell asleep as soon as his head touched the pillow, and he dreamed he was driving with Uncle Fred in a horse-tram, only they weren't running on the lines. Instead, they were clop-clopping along the narrow road to Grenaby behind the horse with the knowing look.
3
'SEA VISTA'
KNELL and his satellites, photographers, fingerprint men, and technicians hunting for clues, had overhauled Uncle Fred's lodgings immediately after breakfast, and gone. Over the telephone, Knell had invited Littlejohn to call at the place as soon as he got to Douglas, and let him have his views and impressions. The Archdeacon, eager to be of use, accompanied him.
'A parson! Is he after conducting the funeral? They haven't arranged the burial yet, have they?'
Mr Trimble answered the door and, without so much as a how-do-you-do, started asking questions right away.
The proprietor of the boarding-house was easily classified. He looked disappointed and defeated. Small, podgy, bald, and pathetic, dressed in a shabby waistcoat and trousers, and in his soiled shirt-sleeves. Apathy and failure written all over him. He had a large moustache of the Italian operatic variety, and a fringe of dark thin hair round his tonsure. Brown, liquid, exophthalmic eyes, like those of a spaniel. He walked with a limp and a rigid jerky gait. A man who, at some time in his prime, might have been strong and muscular, now gone to seed.
The house itself stood in Whaley Road, just off Broadway. One of a row with small front gardens and wrought-iron railings. Georgian frontages, some of them spick-and-span and fresh with new cream colour-wash, and their railings freshly painted for the season. Others were forlorn and shabby as though publicly admitting mediocrity and despair.
A brass plate on the gate. Sea Vista. On the glass fanlight over the front door, MRS TRIMBLE, APARTMENTS. A card hanging in the window, VACANCIES. Uncle Fred's room was already in the market! Instead of a front lawn, some lazy and ingenious owner had, at one time, cemented the garden over and now grass was struggling and sprouting in the cracks.
Nothing very cheerful. The kind of commonplace lodging-house you find in dozens clustered round large city stations. The front door was open and the glass door of the vestibule closed. Littlejohn rang. Trimble himself appeared. He'd been disturbed in the kitchen where the lodgers' midday dinner was on the boil. He had red eyelids and the besotted look of one who'd missed several nights' sleep. He seemed to mistake the pair of them, in his sleepy way, for an undertaker and his attendant chaplain.
'We're from the police.'
'Oh, The parson, too?'
'He's simply keeping me company. May we come in?'
Trimble stood aside and waved them along.
Not a big house. Three storeys, with attics. A long, dark corridor with a bamboo hatstand half filling it and a painted drainpipe for umbrellas. An aspidistra in a pot and a lot of old raincoats, soiled hats, shabby umbrellas and a coloured parasol cluttering up the place. To the left, doors to the dining-room and lounge; on the right, stairs, with large knobbed newel-posts, climbing up the wall. Beyond them, the kitchens, whence the smells of cabbage, cooking meat, gravy and floor-polish emerged and battled with the odours of soiled bed linen, cosmetics, stale tobacco, cheap scented soap, and naphthalene lavatory disinfectant which flowed down the stairs.
Linoleum on the hall floor, a worn red carpet on the stairs, held in place by brass rods. Through the open door of the dining-room an anaemic girl laying places for lunch at one single long table, distributing soiled table-napkins in wooden rings, the last stand of respectability and seedy elegance. . . .
A woman shepherding three small children, all under ten, turned the landing and started to descend the stairs, her hands full with her unruly brood.
'Why isn't daddy coming?'
> 'I said he'd gone to see a friend. Can't you be told?'
'But why?'
'Oh, shut up, do! I can't never have a bit of peace on my 'olidays.'
They were carrying buckets and spades and the eldest boy held a small fishing-net. He was picking his nose. The woman looked tired, thin, and fed-up. Trimble ignored them as they passed into the street, still questioning and quarrelling among themselves with a punctuation of whimpering, slaps, and lamentations.
Sounds of whispering in the lounge, and a man emerged followed by a woman. He carried a leather suitcase, well worn and plastered with labels, and wore a flashy grey suit and a grey felt hat to match it. Middle-aged and furtive-looking, with a fleshy red face and mouth, a small dark moustache, and poached brown eyes. His thin receding hair was glued to his head with brilliantine. The woman, an unctuous blonde, was tall and handsome, with a veneer of vulgar sophistication. The man addressed Littlejohn.
'Did I hear you say you were from the police?'
'Yes.'
'Excuse me. Here's my card.'
O. FINNEGAN, F. INST. B. CON.
BUSINESS CONSULTANT
'I've got to get away on the one o'clock plane to Manchester. A business appointment. Important clients I daren't miss seein'. Means big money to me. You've got the address on the card there if you want me later . . . .'
He was obviously anxious to be off, and, judging from the way Trimble was eyeing him, Littlejohn could guess the reason. Had the limelight of publicity and journalism been turned on Sea Vista, as they probably would be any minute, somebody somewhere would ask what Mr Finnegan was doing there posing as the husband of the blonde Juno, when all the time his wife and family thought he was elsewhere business consulting! The same, sordid old tale. . . .
'Did you mention this to the Inspector who called earlier?'
'Yes. But I thought maybe you were a senior man and would understand my position better. . . .'
'And go over his head? What did he say?'
Mr Trimble couldn't wait. He didn't want the serpent to sneak out of Sea Vista; he wanted to kick him out later.
'He told him not to go till the police said so.'
'Well, you'd better wait then, Mr Finnegan.'
'But
'I'm sorry. I can do nothing.'
The man retreated, abashed and muttering to himself, into the lounge again. More whispering behind the door, voices raised, shouts and reproaches. Then the blonde emerged, slammed the door with Mr Finnegan inside, and stormed into the street.
'Could we see Mr Snook's bedroom?'
'Yes. It's just as 'e left it, except the bed's been tidied and the place dusted. The police said not to touch anythin', but we'd already made the bed and . . .'
The whining voice kept on and on as they climbed to the first floor. A dark landing, and a corridor with four doors leading off and a bathroom at the far end. From behind one of the doors came a noise like someone chanting or saying prayers and responses.
'It's the pair we call the honeymooners. They're middle-aged, but we think they're newly-weds, though they haven't let on. She's at least ten years older than 'im, but then she 'as the money.'
Trimble's drone merged with the chanted conversation going on behind the door marked '3'.
'They're packin' up, ready for off, as soon as you fellows'll let 'em go. This Uncle Fred business has done us a lot of 'arm; spoiled the season for us, in fact. People don't want to spend their 'olidays at an 'otel where somebody's been murdered, even if it did 'appen off the premises. Mrs Mullineaux keeps askin' if they're bringin' the body back 'ere . . . . Says she won't stop. . . . They'll 'ave to pay for the whole week, of course, but. . .'
'Is that the name of the pair in No. 3 ?'
'Yes. Mullineaux. . . .'
He pronounced it Mullinaxe.
Up another flight of stairs, this time narrower and more seedy. No carpet covered this lot; just worn oilcloth. Trimble climbed slowly, mounting crabwise on account of his lameness.
'Mr Snook lived on the first floor out of season when we'd no visitors. The rooms are cheaper then. In July and August and the first week in September prices go up, as you well know. So Mr Snook went up, too. . . . To the second floor where the cheaper rooms are. Here we are.'
A long dismal, shabby corridor, with another bathroom at the far end of it. Four more doors. Trimble opened No. 5.
'Inspector Knell left the key and we didn't lock it in view of the fact that you was comin'. He said nobody'd to go in. I saw to that.'
'Very good. Lead on . . . .'
A stuffy room lighted by sash windows, one at the front and the other cut in the gable-end of the house. An austere place with soiled cream walls relieved by cheap prints in Oxford frames. More oilcloth on the floor and a small rug on each side of the bed. The latter was of dark oak, the sort you can pick up in sale-rooms any day. It had already been stripped of its linen and now merely held an old spring-mattress and a cheap down quilt. An old armchair in faded green plush; a chest of drawers with its top badly marked by cigarette burns; and a rickety dressing-table with a mirror out of control and wedged in place by an old cigarette packet. A large old-fashioned wardrobe, with nothing in it but a shabby raincoat, a spare shirt, and a pair of worn-out bedroom slippers. A small antiquated wireless-set on a tumbledown bamboo bedside-table, and a cane chair. Under the bed, an empty battered fibre suitcase. . . .
Littlejohn strolled to the front window and looked out at the monotonous row of roofs and windows opposite, with the sunny blue sky above them and the street just visible below. Then to the one in the gable-end. Thence, he could see a small triangle of the sea, like a blue pocket-handkerchief, between the sloping slates of other properties. Sea Vista. This must be the vista! Another better-class street below, with prosperous-looking boarding-houses lining it and people in their holiday clothes sauntering about, casual and carefree, or lounging in the front gardens, anointed with oil, sun-burning themselves.
Littlejohn turned to the Archdeacon, who stood beside him looking out, too. The parson had been silent for a long time, not wishing to interfere, leaving all the questions to the expert. His face showed no disgust at the sordid set-up in which Uncle Fred had spent his last years. In the clear blue eyes there was just wonder at yet another example of human behaviour and endurance.
'Where was everybody when Uncle Fred died, Trimble?'
'All except me and Susie, the maid, was out at the carnival.'
'Nobody else indoors?'
'Not one of 'em, Superintendent. It's the event of the week, you see.'
A clock below struck twelve discordantly. Lunch-time in the offing and hungry visitors beginning to forage for food. By stretching his neck and standing on tiptoe Littlejohn could see from the side window the back-yards of Sea Vista and its immediate neighbours. Dustbins, plumbing climbing up and down the back walls, washing festooned on lines, wet towels and bathing-costumes draped on window-sills, a dog chained to a kennel gnawing a bone, a sandy Manx tomcat sprawled on top of a wall. . . .
In a room along the corridor someone started to play an accordion softly and sing a refrain.
I left my heart
In the blue-grass country,
Where my buddy
Stole my baby from me.
'I've asked 'im not to keep on playin'. It don't seem decent. But he won't be told. You see, he's entered for the personality competition and he's practisin' his act.'
'Did he always pay for his room promptly?'
'Who? Oh, Snook. . . . Yes, weekly, on the dot.'
'Did he seem to have plenty of money?'
'He wasn't without. I don't know where he got it from. I never knew of 'im goin' to a bank. . . . Never saw a bank-book, either, for that matter. It seemed to me that when he was runnin' short of the ready, he'd go and get more from somewhere. He'd go away for a whole day and come back smellin' of drink and then he'd be flush with money for about a month, and then go off for more.'
'Perhaps he had a pension of so
me kind.'
The Archdeacon made the suggestion, and Trimble jumped to hear him speak. He scratched his bald head.
'I wouldn't know about that, bishop. . . . I take it, sir, you are the Bishop of Sodor and Man.'
Trimble looked at the gaiters with respect. He was going to tell the guests about this visit.
'No. Just Archdeacon.'
'Oh. . . . Well, sir, yore friend there is, I see, takin' a look round at the late Uncle Fred's belongin's. . . . As the Inspector wot was 'ere earlier found out, there's not a single letter, paper, bill, or book of any kind bearin' Mr Snook's name. I've no proof it was Snook. That's wot he said it was when he came 'ere years ago and he asked all the visitors who got a bit friendly with 'im, to call 'im Uncle Fred.'
He was right. Littlejohn had been opening and closing drawers. They held very little. A change of linen, collars and ties, a nightshirt, shaving tackle, toothbrush, a few patent medicines. That was about all. No jewellery, except a gold hunter watch in a drawer still ticking away. Uncle Fred seemed to have just the suit he was found in, and the few essentials for keeping himself clean and neat. Finally, a few books. Littlejohn examined them carefully and passed them to his friend, who raised his eyebrows. The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft. . . . It might have been the story of Uncle Fred himself. . . . A lonely man on his own, to whom death finally came quickly and quietly. . . .
Two more books. Gill's Manx Scrapbook and a copy of Trevelyan's English Social History. They were all soiled and well-thumbed, but contained no names on their flyleaves. The Archdeacon carefully and patiently examined the pages of each. Nothing, except two single-page timetables of Manx buses and trains. . . . Yes, Uncle Fred was certainly a cut above the average.
Trimble was getting fidgety.
'I'll have to be gettin' down. Dinner's on the boil and the girls are sure to spoil it if I'm not there.'
There wasn't much point in staying longer. Outside the door of the room, Littlejohn halted a moment.
Corpse At The Carnival (A Cozy Mystery Thriller) (Inspector Little John Series) Page 3