He turned to John Costain.
'What can you tell us about Fred Snowball, John?'
'Aw. . . . '
Costain shuffled in the bed to find a comfortable spot and stroked his chin. Traa dy Liooar. Plenty of time. They were in for a long session. The Archdeacon didn't approve.
'Now, John. No more hemming and hawing. . . . You want Fred's murderer laying by the heels, so just be a little more brisk and informative.'
Mrs Costain entered with a huge tin tray laden with large cups of tea and a plate of buttered soda cakes enough to feed a multitude.
'Help yourselves.'
They had to get it over, for Costain had a vast appetite and would indulge in nothing but small-talk and personal questions about Littlejohn and Knell until the platter was clean and the second and third cups of tea disposed of.
'I first met Fred Snowball seven years since. . . . He came to ask if I'd row him over to the Calf in my boat.'
'Yes?'
'He said he was a minin' engineer, interested in the 'istory of minin', leck. Now it is said that a chap called Bushell, as had been seccitary to a Lord Bacon, in England, come over to the Calf about 1650 and did some prospectin' there. There was copper and silver to be had, they say. Fred told me all that. He'd read it. He wanted to see for himself. Well, I rowed him over a number of times. . . . He didn't seem to get much about Master Bushell, but he did get powerful fond of the Calf. . . . Of course, it's a lovely spot in the good weather. Quiet and peaceful and. . ."
The Archdeacon reined him up and put him back on the rails again.
'You became good friends, John ?'
'Aye. Tuck a fancy to one another. He went back over and came every year. . . . Then, about five years ago, he said he was stayin' on the Islan' for good.'
'Where did he stay when he came over for holidays?'
'Down in Douglas. He was a queer sort. He liked peace and quiet, an' yet when he was quiet and peaceful, he wanted people. A bit contrary, leck. He said a time or two, if we'd had another proper room here, he'd have settled and lodged with us. But he'd never 'ave stayed long that way. Cregneish is no place for a restless fellah like Fred. So he lived in one place and spent a lot of his time in the other. Eddicated man, he was, too. Knew a lot about things. Terrible interested in the birds on the Calf. . . . Sit for hours watchin' the puffins there and laughin' away at them.'
'Did he ever talk to you about his personal affairs?'
Costain's face took on a stubborn look.
'I know you listened and kept your own counsel about Fred, John. But now he's dead, it's your duty to tell us all you can and help us to find who killed him.'
'Aw. . . I suppose it is, Master Kinrade. But it's a bit hard, leck. Doesn't seem decent. . . . He'd run away from his wife, you see. Said she was a tartar. Admitted that she was a good-looker at eighteen and he let his heart run away with his head. Actually said when he asked her dad if he could marry her, the old fellah ups and warns him, leck. "I never been able to mannidge her myself, Fred," he says. "The good Lord knows how you'll mannidge 'er. You're takin' on a rare handful." Plain as that, the old fellah put it. But poor Fred didn't find out till it was too late. He once told me there wasn't much loose in his house, across, that his old lady hadn't thrown at his head one time an' another. Terr'ble temper . . . .'
'So he left her?'
'Aye, he left her. Said she wasn't a woman; just a block of ice.'
Costain started to look sheepish, as though beginning to tread on delicate or unholy ground. With the religious mottoes on the walls, there seemed to be certain things he thought unspeakable.
Littlejohn filled his pipe and waited. Traa dy Liooar. Plenty of time. He felt the same. The slow, low-geared mood was on him. He could stay there until the cows came home! But the Archdeacon was hot on the trail. His eyes shone and his froth of whiskers jutted aggressively from his chin.
'There was some other woman, then?'
'Aw. . . .'
'Come on, John. Out with it.'
'What's the missus doin'?'
'She's talking outside with the woman next door. What has that to do with it?'
'She might not like me talkin' about it. Specially with you bein' the Archdeacon of Man.'
'Well, tell Littlejohn then, if you're so squeamish.'
'Aw. . . . Yes, there was another woman. I told Fred when he started to talk about her, it wasn't right and I didn't approve. "A man's got to have a woman who understands him," he said to me, so pitiful, leck, that I let him go on with what he was sayin'. Inside, I hoped he found some good one to comfort him for the one that threw the things about the house at him. . . . But no. The second was as bad as the first. She didn't throw things at him. In fact, he said she was a gentle lovin' sort. But I recollect him sayin' she was most gentle and lovin' when it was a fur coat or a diamond ring she was wanting. A rale monkey of a woman. In the end, Fred saw the light an' left her.'
'And came to live over here for good?'
'Aye. He settled down in a boardin'-house in Douglas and lived the life of a bachelor.'
The Archdeacon looked at Littlejohn questioningly. The Superintendent took up the inquiry.
'Did you ever have any reason for thinking that Fred was still fond of the women?'
Costain rubbed his chin nervously and shuffled about in his bed. The dog leapt to his feet protestingly at the disturbance, barked, turned round twice, and settled and fell asleep again across his boss's feet.
'Aw. . . . Now why talk ill of the dead, master? Why not let him rest ?'
'I'm not asking out of idle curiosity, John. If we're to find out who killed him, we must know all about him. There aren't any clues of the kind you perhaps read about in your books. We've got the hard task of bringing Fred Snowball to life and almost asking him who killed him.'
Costain nodded.
'Some men take to the drink and get to be proper sponges full of it; others take to the money and grow into misers; and some's fond of eatin'. . . . We've all got our faults. Fred's weakness was the women. He'd always an eye for a good-looker. . . .Some sort of intoxicated him. Nothin' wrong as far as I knew. Just he couldn't resist them. He liked to talk with a pretty lass or a good-lookin' woman an' he might tap her on the cheek or give her a li'l cuddle or, if she was a bit forward, leck, slap her on the behind. . . . Aw, it's not right to be talkin' like this of the dead.'
It was quite enough, though. Another little piece in the jigsaw of the complete Uncle Fred.
Through the window, between the geraniums and the fuchsia flowers, Littlejohn could see the orange and red of sunset showing in magnificence over the sea in the direction of Bradda. The charabanc parties were returning from their evening trip to the Sound and singing on their way home.
I left my heart
In the blue-grass country,
Where my buddy
Stole my baby
From me.
He thought of Uncle Fred and John Costain down at the Sound, bringing in the boat after a trip to Calf Island. Two elderly men, idling the days away, one busy with his boat, and the other perhaps looking about the place, admiring the view, and his eyes suddenly lighting up as he spotted a fine figure or a pretty face emerging from a charabanc.
'Did you know Fred went under two or three different names?'
'Aye. I believe he'd once been called Boycott. He told me one time, when he was sittin' lookin' across to the Chicken Rock from the Calf on a peaceful night like this. He said he'd never any wish to cross the water to England again. "I left all my troubles behind me there," he says. An' then it all came out. He just walked out on his first missus an' he tuck another name so she couldn't trace him, leck. Started a new life. "Mind you, John," he sez, "I left her most of what I'd got." And he tells me she'd the best part of a coupla hundred thousand pounds to enjoy the income of. I couldn't believe it. To see him sittin' there in an old suit an' a pair of worn shoes an' with a hole in his sock, you wouldn't have thought he'd have two hal'pennies to rub together. . . . But I ne
ver found him tell a lie. And he was a well-spoke, eddicated man.'
'And he'd changed his name to Snowball?'
'Yes. A chap with a queer twist o' humour, you see. Snowball was the name the second woman knew him by. So, he told me he'd changed that, too, so he couldn't be traced. Snook, he was known by in Douglas. Snowball was after a black fellah from America he knew in the first war. A black they give the nickname to . . . . Always made him laugh, he said. An' Snook. . . . In his comical humour, he said he'd once heard of a fellah of that name, and he thought it funny, and as good as any other for his purposes.'
Littlejohn smiled. Uncle Fred had been quite a card, with his funny sense of humour and his women.
'Did he ever mention his daughter, Victoria?'
'Queenie, you mean. . . . Yes. He was fond of her, in a way. She was at school, he told me, when he left his first wife. He saw Queenie twice, I think, after that. Went across an' met her. Then, she took up with a fellah Fred didn't like and when her dad said so, she told him, leck, that she was goin' to marry the fellah whatever her dad said. . . . Fred sort o' lost interest after that. He never saw her again.'
'He seems to have talked freely to you, John. You were together a lot ?'
'Two or three days a week, sometimes, Superintendent. Fred loved it down here. The place got in his bones, he said. Specially the Calf. Whenever the weather was fit, he'd want to row across. He'd got a permit to go any time. It belongs to the Manx National Trust, you know. Bird sanctuary. . . . We'd take a case of beer. Not that I like the drink much, but Fred had a thirst for it at times. I'd drop him offen, an' then go on an' do a bit o'fish'n or get a crab or two. Then, pick him up in the everin' and bring him back in time for his bus to Douglas.'
'What about winter?'
'He'd still come. . . .The weather's nice here even in winter. Some days is calm and sunny. Quite frequent, it would be fit to cross the Sound. Fred got terrible interested in the birds. He'd sit for hours watchin' the puffins or the jinny-divers . . . cormorants, you know.'
For seven years, on and off, Fred Boycott had been coming there, idling the hours away, watching the birds, sailing in Costain's boat, loafing about Calf Island, enjoying the warm laziness of summer days, and even in winter, seeking the company of this comfortable discreet Manxman, to whom he seemed to have told the story of his past life. Costain, like all Manxmen, was a good listener. Traa dy Liooar. Time enough. Give Uncle Fred time and he'd tell everything.
'And whilst you've been bedridden, John, has Fred been coming down here as usual?'
'Naw. Me bein' in bed seemed to upset his programme, leck. He'd call once a fortnight, about. He had all his letters addressed to him here. He didn't want them nosin' in his affairs at the boarding-house. Bring me somethin' to read an' smoke. Generous, he was. I told him he ought to get another boatman when he wanted to take a trip over the Sound, but he jest said he'd have to see about it. We seemed to know all about one another, he said, and talkin' to me was like talkin' to himself. "You get betther, John," he sez. "Then we'll teck out the boat agen." He seemed ready to wait till I was up an' about.'
'Meanwhile, do you know what he did with the time he once spent with you?'
'Naw. . . . He never said.'
Uncle Fred, with all the time on his hands, might have got into mischief one way or another. There was no telling. Perhaps, with the old boatman to talk to and keep him company, he'd still have been alive. As it was . . .
Littlejohn looked round the room again, and then at the view through the open window. His eyes slowly moved to where the sun was gently sinking, and then to the stretch of horizon and sea beyond the great mass of Spanish Head, with the Calf right ahead. A place without vice or malice, where Fred had come and gone like one of the family. Conversation was pleasant and would probably drag on idly, and Uncle Fred would tell them, bit by bit, as though talking to himself, how he'd become a beachcomber, a loafer, who had, under the spell of the Isle of Man and its courteous, kindly folk, cast off from his unhappy past altogether, and started afresh. Traa dy Liooar. Plenty of time. All the time in the world and nobody to bother him. A life as harmless and serene as the lives of these people of Cregneish among whom he spent so much of it. Endless days in the sun and air, with the smack of the sea and the faint scents of ling and fuchsia on the breeze.
And then . . . Costain had become bedridden, Uncle Fred's restlessness had returned, and trouble had started. . . . Was that it?
'What about money? How did Fred live?'
Again Costain shuffled uneasily in bed and the dog protested.
'Fred's dead and gone and there's no harm in telling us now, John. Did he get it dishonestly in some way?'
'Course not. . . . Honest as the day, was Fred.'
He pointed to the top drawer of the washstand.
'There's a key in the top drawer there. Will you please, reverend, teck it and open the top drawer of the dresser in the nex' room? An' bring the parcel in the right corner, tied up with a bit o' string.'
The Archdeacon was soon back with the little parcel, wrapped up in brown paper.
'Please open it, master.'
A Post Office bank-book in the name of Fred Snowball; some Savings Certificates; an old Army Paybook in the name of Frederick M. Boycott; the birth certificate of Fred Mandeville Boycott, of Upton Byers, Sussex; a few share certificates which tallied with the small holdings Littlejohn had already noted on the old copy of the Financial Times; and a government annuity of £300 a year. Finally, in a separate envelope, a will leaving all Fred Snowball had in the world to John and Mary Costain. . . . And he'd trusted everything to his two friends in the little cottage at Cregneish, probably to avoid the Trimbles' nosing into his affairs.
Fred Boycott must have been in a hurry to flee from his women in the past. First, he'd left a quarter of a million behind him, just to get away from the wife he couldn't stand any longer. And then, he'd got himself tangled with another. And from her, he'd bolted with just the clothes he'd stood up in and capital enough to bring him in about £400 a year. Five hundred in the Post Office, four hundred in Savings Certificates, and a few paltry shareholdings. . . . And he'd found happiness at last. The busy world left behind. Eating, drinking, dozing, loafing.
'Did he marry the second woman?'
'How could he? He'd got a wife already.'
'He might have gone through a form of marriage and fled finally as a bigamist.'
'Naw. He never spoke of that. Just that he lived with the second woman till he couldn't stand it any longer. Then he jest tuck enough to live on and left her with the rest.'
'Well, that seems to be all, John, and thank you for what you've told us. We'd better be going now. Time's getting on.'
'You'll come again, sir. An' you, too, Archdeacon, and Mr Knell. If I think of anythin' else, I'll save it and tell you next time.'
The day was drawing in and the blue of the sea darkening as they left and made for the car. Another fine day tomorrow. A red sunset over Bradda and the faint chill of approaching night in the warm air. Nobody spoke. It seemed a pity to break the evening calm. Even the men gathered in small knots here and there in the village were silent, smoking and watching everything.
It was the same on the way home. As though the holiday crowds had somehow been cowed into quietness by the beauty of the dying day. Port St Mary looked homely and peaceful. People strolling along the main street and waterfront. . . No noise, no hurry. Cars glided past and, out at sea, a few boats and a couple of yachts with sails spread, were heading for port.
On the road back to Grenaby, the vast spread of lonely inland country was deserted. A few late birds singing, an odd rabbit running along the grass verge, a farm dog trotting off on some business of his own, a cat sitting rigid in a hedge watching a mousehole.
Back in the village again, Littlejohn knew he understood Uncle Fred perfectly. Time stood still. A faint breath of wind in the tree-tops, like a caress. No noise save that of the river rushing under the old stone bridge and
on its course to the green tunnel of overhanging branches where the local spirits haunted and gambolled, even at high noon, because they couldn't wait for the night. The hot evening air was heavy with the scents of old roses and wood-smoke. Joe Jenn, a bankrupt wool-merchant from Yorkshire, who'd settled there and run to seed, hanging over the gate, smoking his pipe, with his old coat and trousers drawn over his nightshirt. Just like Uncle Fred, except that Fred had always been meticulous about washing and shaving every day and was more fastidious in his dress.
At the vicarage, Maggie Keegin, the housekeeper, was waiting on the doorstep, looking annoyed.
'Telephone again!' she said to Knell. 'It's always telephones, murders, and upsets whenever you're hauntin' this place.'
The police-station at Douglas, ringing up Knell on the off-chance he was at the vicarage.
A Mr and Mrs Valentine-Rudd had been at the police-station asking for the officer in charge of the Fred Boycott case. At the mention of the name Snook, the lady had grown very annoyed. Uncle Fred had been her father and his name was Boycott.
Queenie had arrived!
6
QUEENIE
IT was too much to ask Littlejohn to go all the way back to Douglas again that night, so, an appointment was made for him to meet the Valentine-Rudds at Douglas police-station at ten o'clock next morning. Knell, therefore, went home, looking like a man whose work was never done, and the Superintendent and the Archdeacon ate a good meal together, drank some of Mr Kinrade's special port, talked a lot, and went to bed respectably early. Maggie Keggin suggested the telephone be taken from the hook, but they didn't go so far, and were not disturbed.
Littlejohn was at Douglas promptly next morning. The. Valentine-Rudds had not arrived at the police-station and didn't turn up until ten-thirty. When he saw them, Littlejohn understood why they were late. They were the type who took hours to dress and get ready for going out. Always late, always rushing about at the last minute, always apologizing for not being on time, always blaming one another for the delay.
A taxi halted in front of the police-station and an excited couple scrambled out of it. Knell watched them with a cold eye. He didn't give them time to hang about in the vestibule, but strode to the door and flung it open. Then he paused, as though something had taken his breath away.
Corpse At The Carnival (A Cozy Mystery Thriller) (Inspector Little John Series) Page 7