Corpse At The Carnival (A Cozy Mystery Thriller) (Inspector Little John Series)

by George Bellairs

  Hotel! That was a good one! Wait till she saw Sea Vista. Knell felt a wave of satisfaction surge through him. He gave instructions to a constable about booking a room for Mrs Boycott and hoped the hotels were all full up.

  'I'll drive you to Sea Vista, madam.'

  'Sea Vista? Whatever's that?'

  'The boarding-house where Mr Snook . . . ahem . . . Mr Boycott lodged.'

  'Incredible!'

  She said it again, too, when they pulled up at the boardinghouse, and again when Mr Trimble, still in his shirt-sleeves, opened the door to them.

  All the boarders were at home eating high tea. A room full, with the orphan of the storm and the Italian maid running in and out with cups of tea and plates of bread and cakes. The Greenhalgh children were in full blast. Mrs Boycott and Mrs Nessle, the star boarder, met face to face on the stairs. They both looked alike, powdered up to the eyes and decked-out in finery. They might have been sisters, and eyed one another scornfully up and down. Mrs Nessle thought Mrs Boycott was a new arrival, nay, a competitor for the best room, opened a pair of lorgnettes, and examined her rival through them. To keep up the spirits of his fellow-lodgers, the accordionist, now second-prize winner in the personality competition, was giving them a tune and they were singing the chorus through mouthfuls of bread and butter and ham.

  I left my heart

  In the blue-grass country,

  Where my buddy

  Stole my baby

  From me.

  Maria, the Italian, thrusting her voluptuous bosom well before her, cannoned into Mrs Boycott with a pile of empty plates.

  'Incredible!'

  Trimble thought that now was the time to offer condolences.

  'I 'ear you're Uncle Fred's missus. Please accept the sympathy of all of us. We're collectin' for a wreath. I shall miss 'im. We were pals. We used to go fishin' together sometimes.'

  'Indeed! Incredible!'

  Mrs Trimble thought it better to take over.

  'Follow me.'

  She was speaking posh, but eyed Mrs Boycott aggressively. Now and then, she smiled slightly as though thinking of Uncle Fred and what a missus he'd chosen for himself.

  Mrs Boycott had started her tour of the house by disdainfully eyeing the interior. Mrs Trimble was ready to tell her off and ask her who she thought she was, if she got the slightest chance.

  Once in her husband's room, Mrs Boycott started to take more interest. She looked disgusted at his choice of surroundings and his taste in companionship, but she remembered, too, that she was there on business.

  'I suppose he had private papers somewhere.'

  She made for the chest of drawers, but Mrs Trimble was there first.

  'The police said nothing's to be touched.'

  'The police?'

  'Are you aware that Mr Snook was murdered.'

  'Mr Boycott, if you please.'

  'He was Uncle Fred or Mr Snook to all of us here, and that's what he'll always remain.'

  Mrs Trimble's eyes flashed in her best principal-boy manner, the way she'd faced the wicked fairy long ago.

  Mrs Boycott hesitated. Knell was sure she was after the spare cash and any will Uncle Fred might have left behind. She drew herself together.

  'I find it impossible to deal with such incredible people. I would like to see Superintendent Littlejohn again. He will understand. Take me to him, at once.'

  Mrs Trimble wasn't going to let that pass.

  'I wouldn't have thought the Superintendent was your sort or on your wavelength at all. He's a gentleman, is the Superintendent.'

  Knell jumped in to prevent the opening of hostilities in earnest.

  'He's finished for the day. He's off duty.'

  'Very well. Please inform him and ask him to arrange with this person . . .'

  Mrs Trimble's opulent and half-naked bosom heaved with rage.

  'Let me tell you. . .'

  Knell, who in the course of duty would deal intrepidly with the huskiest and hardest malefactors, was scared.

  'I think we'd better be off.'

  He winked at Mrs Trimble, who winked back, and tapped her temple to show she understood what he was getting at. Mrs Boycott was barmy. That explained it all. She could never be Uncle Fred's missus! Just another crackpot of the kind who always turned up whenever there was crime and publicity. The next thing, Mrs Boycott would be confessing she'd stabbed Uncle Fred herself!

  She saw them to the door and closed it emphatically behind them. From the windows, the lodgers watched them go; some of them were grinning.

  On the step by the gate stood a woman. She was looking at Sea Vista from top to bottom as though expecting a window to open and someone to hail her. An elderly woman dressed in her best black. Obviously not a holidaymaker; more like a native from somewhere in the country. Small, with a thin apple-cheeked face, a modest almost frightened look. White hair and honest blue eyes and the rather bent jaded frame of one who has worked hard all her life. She was clutching a black, imitation leather handbag.

  She was nervous; a simple type who didn't wish to intrude, but she had come for a set purpose and was determined to see it through.

  'Excuse me.'

  She spoke to Knell, who, in his usual kindly way, stopped to answer her. Mrs Boycott swept past without a look. She thought the woman was going to start a pitiful tale and ask for alms.

  'Excuse me.'

  The newcomer opened her bag and took out the now familiar newspaper cutting. She pointed at Uncle Fred's picture with a small forefinger which might have belonged to a child.

  'Could you tell me. . . ? The paper said he died yesterday. . . .'

  'That's right. Did you know him?'

  'Yes. You see . . .'

  She paused.

  'You ought to go to the police-station. That's what it said in the paper, didn't it?'

  'Yes. I knew he lived here, though. I was a bit scared of goin' to the police. I've never been to the police-station in Douglas before. I thought I'd inquire here first, just to make sure.'

  'Well, I'm a police Inspector, so you can tell me.'

  'You're Manx, aren't you?'

  'Yes.'

  'I thought you were.'

  She seemed happy again, confident in one of her own people.

  'Well, I just called to say that I knew him. The paper said anybody who knew him was to tell the police. My husband's been bedfast for nearly twelve months and couldn't come, but he said I ought to do it. It said in the paper, the Douglas police, else I'd have gone to the Port St Mary police.'

  'And you've come all this way?'

  'It said Douglas.'

  'It's very good of you, Mrs. . .'

  'Mrs Costain. My husband used to be a boatman till he had his illness. I must get back home, too. He'll want me. I can't leave him for long.'

  'Did you know Mr Snook, then? Or did he call himself Boycott?'

  'No. I never knew him as that. Fred Snowball we always knew him as. That was the name he used on his private papers.'

  Knell raised his hat and scratched his head. This was getting quite out of hand. Snowball now!

  'Look here, Mrs Costain. I'll take you with me to the police-station in the car. I've got to drop off the lady you see sitting in it. Then I'll run you down to where you live. Where is it? Port St Mary? Come on. . . .'

  Mrs Boycott looked down her nose again at the modest intruder.

  'Who is this person?'

  She whispered it to Knell loud enough for all to hear.

  'A friend of mine,' said Knell, and then he boiled over. 'And I'll ask you to be civil about her.'

  'Incredible!' said Mrs Boycott to some invisible person.

  'Thank God!' said Knell when, at the police-station, he learned that Fort Anne could take Mrs Boycott. 'Take her in the spare car. I'm going to see Superintendent Littlejohn again. Get him for me on the phone at Grenaby parsonage.'

  Eventually they traced Littlejohn to the airport.

  'What's he been doin' there all this time?' sa
id Knell as he took over the instrument.

  'I badly want to see you again, sir. Can I call and pick you up where you are? I'm bringing another witness. This time a fisherman's wife from Port St Mary. Decent Manx, she is. No . . . . Oh, no. I don't know how she's connected with him, but she doesn't know him as Uncle Fred . . . or Mr Snook. . . or Mr Boycott. . . . No . . . . Fred Snowball . . . .'

  The answer was a roar of laughter.

  'What did you say, sir? Oh . . . . Good old Uncle Fred. . . . I see . . . .'

  Knell's face was a study as he put down the telephone. Was he, Knell, going off his chump, or was everybody else going mad?

  'Is it all right?' asked the patient homely woman waiting for him,

  'I suppose so,' he sighed. 'Yes, I suppose so . . . .'

  5

  THE INVALID OF CREGNEISH

  AT the airport, the strain left Mrs Costain's face as soon as she saw the Archdeacon.

  'Aw; Master Kinrade, I'm glad to be puttin' a sight on ye. I've been that bothered gettin' mixed up with the police, and all.'

  'What's the matter, Mary?'

  The Venerable Archdeacon was on Christian-name terms with most of the local people. In his long life, he had been associated with them all in one way or another.

  'Himself. . . my husband. . . said I'd better call and say the man . . . the photo in the paper . . . was a friend of ours called Fred Snowball. He'd often come and see us at Cregneish. My husband said I was to bring the police down. He took to his bed last winter and hasn't been about since. Mr Snowball often had business with my husband, and himself wanted to help them find who murdered him.'

  'You yourself don't know anything?'

  'I'd rather John told you. It's really no business of mine.'

  The Archdeacon smiled.

  'I'd better come with you,' he said to Littlejohn. 'Otherwise, you'll get nothing from a crowd of questions. It takes a Manxman to quiz a Manxman.'

  They left the airport, skirted Castletown, and took the road which Littlejohn thought gave the loveliest view he'd ever seen in his life, in spite of the fact that once, a frightened man had tried to pot him with a rifle there. The sight of Carrick Bay from Fishers' Hill. . . .

  Evening was drawing on, the air remained hot and still. As the car turned the corner by the sea, the full view of the south of the Island came to meet them. The coast road, the Mull Hills and Peninsula, with Bradda Head and Barrule in the background, and in front, the vast stretch of blue water. They turned in at the Port St Mary road, climbed steadily up a broad highway, and entered Cregneish, the most southerly village of the Island, and the most characteristically Manx. It spread itself like an encampment in little clumps of clean whitewashed, thatched houses about its hill-side. A small church, a farmstead or two, clusters of cottages. Here, with the sea ahead, and the rough roads climbing the hills, farm fields running down to a magnificent rocky coast, horses and cattle grazing almost on the doorsteps and sheep looking over rough walls at passers-by, time might have stood still for centuries and left the little community untouched.

  Dark, sturdy people, sprinkled liberally among the inhabitants, gave rise to a tale of an Armada galleon wrecked on Spanish Head. Only all the wrecks were accounted for long ago and there never was one at Cregneish!

  Work had finished for the day. Groups of men stood gossiping at corners. Inside the cottages, shadows moved about or else sat immobile listening to the radio. Old people had brought their chairs outdoors and sat enjoying the last of the sunshine. A charabanc full of trippers on an evening run passed by on its way to the Sound across which the Calf of Man lay peacefully remote.

  The car just managed to squeeze to the front of an old thatched cottage, the green-painted door of which was open. Mrs Costain led the way in. There was only one floor; two rooms and a small lean-to for a scullery, with a loft-room, reached by a ladder, between the ceiling and the thatch. Littlejohn could touch the rafters with his hand.

  They went straight into the living-room, a cosy place packed with old-fashioned odds and ends and dominated by a broad hearth with a wide chimney and chimney corners, the chiollag. A large, sandy Manx cat, snoozing by the small fire, took no heed of them. Littlejohn bent to stroke it and it began to purr without even opening its eyes. Old cottage furniture, a grandfather clock, a chest, and a dresser full of old ornaments. A disused spinning-wheel in one corner. Really beautiful antique pieces, which would have made a dealer's mouth water.

  At first, Littlejohn thought there was nobody in the clean little house. Then, momentarily, he became aware that someone was about, silent, holding his breath.

  'Who's there?'

  'It's me. I've brought the police.'

  The inquiry came from the next room, entered from the living-room by a door on the right. Mrs Costain's reply caused a commotion. One after another, four Manxmen emerged, good honest workmen, including a fisherman, looked a bit sheepish, politely greeted everybody, and went out at the front door.

  Every evening, John Costain's friends gathered round his bed for a gossip, a li'l cooish, and to retail the events of the day. It was like a club, and sometimes as many as eight or ten men would crush themselves in the small bedroom. One or another shaved the invalid every day and cut his hair when it needed it.

  'Good everin', missus. . . . Good everin', Master Kinrade. . . . Good everin'. . . .'

  They greeted Mrs Costain first, then the parson, and then the other two. It was obvious they were a bit surprised at the arrival of the Archdeacon, whose presence would stamp the Costain house with respectable notoriety like a benediction for a long time to come. Knell and Littlejohn they silently scrutinized and summed up ready for a lot of talk and opinions about them in the days ahead. Already the eyes of all the village were focused on the cottage and tongues were starting to wag.

  The bedroom was bright and cream-washed and completely dominated by a large bed covered by a colourful patchwork quilt, and with fittings and large knobs of brass. A chair with a rush bottom, a washstand, geraniums on the windowsill, and the flowers of a large fuchsia bush climbing in through the open window. Flowers all over the room, in fact. The invalid was fond of them and his friends never came without some. They stood in jam-jars on every available shelf.

  John Costain was sitting up in bed looking as fit as a fiddle. A smooth, round pink face, with pale blue eyes, stiff grey hair with a bald furrow from his brow to the crown of his head, a firm broad chin, and a long inquisitive nose. His eyes twinkled with good humour and he had a look of plain untarnished integrity.

  The winter before, on a stormy day, one of the occupants of the Calf of Man had signalled that a doctor was needed. The Sound race is a formidable current in calm weather, but Costain had offered to row the doctor over. The boat had been swamped on the way back, and Costain himself had needed the doctor since then. Like most fishermen, he couldn't swim, and the doctor had only just managed to hold him and drag him to safety. After that, he'd had him as a patient with rheumatic fever, and Costain had been in bed ever since. He would get up a little in the autumn.

  A collie dog lay across his feet on the bed, barked as the party entered, turned round twice, and fell asleep.

  'Good day to ye, Master Kinrade, and how are ye at all?'

  His eyes fell on Littlejohn.

  'Good day, sir. I've seen your photo in the paper today. You're the Superintendent from over . . . from London, sir?'

  He seemed delighted to have more company, fresh people to talk to.

  'Get them a drink o' tea, missus, an' some soda cakes.'

  The newcomers didn't protest; they all knew it was part of the native courtesy and to refuse would be taken badly.

  The room was full of smoke. In spite of the doctor's orders, Costain liked his tobacco and was already filling his short pipe with dark flake from a jar from which he first removed the piece of potato which kept the contents in good condition. He kept glancing at Littlejohn and nodding.

  'Never thought I'd put a sight on ye in the
flesh, Superintendent. I've read about you a lot in the papers. I read all the time . . . Crime tales and Wild West. . . . Never thought I'd ever be a reader. . . . Now. . .'

  He indicated a pile of paper-backed crime and Western stories which filled a chair.

  'Move that lot on the floor, Archdeacon, and sit ye down. The other two of ye can sit on the bed. . . . We've no room here for another chair.'

  They made themselves comfortable. Littlejohn glanced round the clean walls of the room. There wasn't much space available. Photographs everywhere. Wedding-groups, the fashions of which gave the dates without need for comment. A large one of Mr and Mrs Costain, a bit faded but in which they were plainly recognizable. She laced up in a ribboned wedding frock; he miserable in his best clothes, with a high starched collar and a bowler hat with a tall crown. . . . Four framed pieces of embroidery done on canvas. One a sampler, with a little house and all the letters of the alphabet in red wool. The others, biblical texts or exhortations. Worthy is the Lamb that was Slain. . . . Rock of Ages Cleft for Me. . . . Give us this Day our Daily Bread. . . . You got the impression, knowing the people who lived there, that they were more than ornaments for the walls.

  Costain never asked any of them the purpose of their visit. He had taken a fancy to Littlejohn and set about getting to know all about him.

  'How long have you been on the Islan', sir?'

  And then how did he like it ? how long he'd been a detective? did he like that? was he married? where did he live? did he like London ?

  Finally, to bring Knell in the picture. . . .

  'I suppose this young fellah's your sort of apprentice . . . learnin' the trade.'

  The Archdeacon thought it time to intervene.

  'You know, Littlejohn, you'll never learn anything about John Costain and he'll know all about you, if you go on this way. Get busy. Ask him some questions now. I can't promise you'll get any answers, because he's a Manxman and distrustful of inquisitive come-overs. When an invader arrived and asked where the nearest church was and then burned it down, or when he asked where the money or food was kept, and then carried them off, the Manxman grew a bit cunning and cautious, and remained so.'