by Ellis Peters
“Somebody,” said George, “certainly did.” He was less concerned about that particular somebody. The murderer was hardly likely to want professional observers on the scene, however effectively they might embarrass the police; they were all too likely to turn up something he wanted to remain buried. But the man who hung up a clear alarm signal on the spot could well be the murderer himself, studying to redouble confusion, while he himself withdrew farther into the undergrowth. “Good for the hotel trade, at any rate.”
“Maybe Mrs. Lloyd hung up the parsley,” suggested the boy cheerfully. “Bait for the ghost-hunters!”
“Only fools mock the presence of evil,” said Eb Jennings reprovingly, scowling at the boy, whose long legs spread across the porch almost to the bench on the other side.
“Why not, if propitiation does no good? You might as well die laughing.” He patted the purring iron beast. “Caution, guard dogs on patrol!”
“I will not stay,” said Jennings magnificently, “to listen to impious talk. You’ll excuse me, Mr. Felse, I’ve got work to do.” And as he made his exit through the church, that being the driest way, he looked back at the boy and said, making a lightning return to everyday practicality: “And since you’ve been druv in by the rain, you can go and get some wood in for your mother.”
He was gone, leaving the knocker swaying gently, and rustling as the leaves brushed the door. He also left his own minor shock still almost palpable on the air. George told himself that he ought to have guessed. There was something in their wrangling, teasing, needling exchanges that yet stopped short of all malice, and argued a very considerable area of understanding between them. And yet they were, physically, so strikingly unlike.
The boy was more than a head the taller, elegantly long and loose-knit and athletic, with straight fair hair and blue-grey eyes. His face, too, was elongated, but in suave curves, and with a lot of shapely bone; a high-bridged nose jutted haughtily, and brows level as the pommel of a sword underlined a broad forehead. He was looking straight back at George, well aware of what he must be thinking, and visibly speculating as to whether he would or would not ask. Which made it imperative to ask bluntly or not at all.
“So he’s your father?”
“Well,” said the boy with cheerful deliberation, “by courtesy he is. And anyhow, I’d sooner be Jennings, than Macsen-Martel.”
“Like that, is it?” If the boy was willing to accept the conversation on this level, so was George. “You’re the wild oat I’ve been hearing about.”
“I’m one of them,” said the boy drily. “When you’ve been around here a bit longer you’ll learn to spot this debased Norman pan.”
“He’s left more of you around?”
“Brother,” said the boy reverently, “he could field a football team.” The blue-grey eyes flashed in an impudent but engaging smile. “And probably a netball team as well. You ask Sergeant Moon.” He got up, hoisting the shears from where he had laid them. “I suppose I’d really better go and get some wood in for my mother—it’s set in for the day, by the look of it.” And he walked away unconcernedly through the rain, weaving his way blithely among the graves to take the nearest line to the lodge, and whistling as he went, and George saw in this rear view of him the tall, wide-shouldered, narrow-flanked shape and long gait of the Macsen-Martels, unmistakable in movement where he might have missed it completely in repose. One of the family strays, but one that had found a good home. There was nothing the matter with the relationship between courtesy father and son; and what was further implied was that the situation had been accepted by both of them from the beginning. Ask Sergeant Moon! Not bad advice in the circumstances.
There was moss wound into the parsley wreath, and there was the grit of soil and the remains of an orchreous moisture in the moss. Better let the laboratory have a go at it, they might be able to suggest the locality from which it had come, and if the spirit-hunters had begun to arrive, that might not be Mottisham at all. Either some superstitious crank or earnest student of the occult had really put it there in an effort to guard the church and the community against evil spirits, or the murderer had attempted a piece of conjurer’s misdirection to divert attention from his own solid humanity and his entirely earthly motives. No, on reflection there was, regrettably, the third possibility: someone who enjoyed trouble and chaos had simply added his own contribution to the brew here out of pure devilment. Of that kind of devil even villages as remote as Mottisham have more than enough.
George turned up the collar of his coat and made a dash for it through what had now become a downpour, across the road and into the vicarage drive. In the gateway he collided with a young man who had just descended from the Comerbourne bus and made for the same haven. They steadied each other solicitously with hasty apologies, and recognition was instant and mutual.
“I was just coming to see you, Mr. Felse,” said Dave Cressett, hugging The Midland Scene under his jacket from the driving rain, “I’ve got something here Mrs. Bracewell asked me to bring to you. And something besides to tell you.”
“Always the door,” said Sergeant Moon, late that Friday evening, after they had abandoned the mounds of official reports and statements, and were sitting back relaxed and tired over cigarettes and beer, thoughtfully brought in from the “Duck” by young Brian Jennings. “I’d be ready to bet my job that we were right, it’s the door, not the man. He just blundered into something he didn’t realise was dangerous— apparently merely by having this feeling that there was something odd about this door he’d once photographed for this magazine article. Now you tell me what dangerous secret there can be about an oak door? Worth killing for?”
“And before he’d even run to earth whatever it was he was after,” George pointed out. “A very dangerous secret indeed—show a little too much interest in it, and that’s enough, you’re knocked off just in case. Yet there was plenty of interest being shown in it—by all kinds of people. It was ceremonially on show. So what was so different about this man Bracewell’s interest, to mark him out as the chance that couldn’t be taken?”
“He was there prowling around it at night,” said Moon, “and alone. A crowd with a battery of cameras was O.K. One man with a torch sneaking back by himself wasn’t.”
“There was one more thing about him that was different, Jack. He’d seen it before.”
Moon considered that carefully. For centuries the door had hung in the cellars of the Abbey. The house had never been shown; and it was improbable that there had ever been more than one such article about it as the one in The Midland Scene. It wasn’t important enough or beautiful enough; it played too insignificant a part in history. The wonder was that it had achieved a place even once in such a series. That made Bracewell, in all probability, the only person present at the re-dedication, apart, of course, from the family, who had ever seen the door in its previous position.
“But even so, what could there have been about it to make him think he might get a scoop out of it? Something he hadn’t noticed until the thing was cleaned up? But then it would be there for everyone to notice. Whatever was queer about it meant nothing to anyone but him.”
“And what discoveries can you make about a door, for God’s sake? There it is, a solid block of wood with a lump of iron attached, everything about it visible at a glance.” George stretched and yawned. “Well, I’ll see this Miss Trent tomorrow, and have another word with Mrs. Bracewell. Who knows, I may hit on the right question by sheer luck, and stir a recollection, or she may have thought of something on her own. We’ve no choice about pulling out all the stops now, Jack. It took some hard work to get the Old Man to leave it with us, we’ve got to justify it now or die trying.”
“Well, at least we found the camera. Not that I expect the lab boys will get anything off it.” And of course it had been empty, the film extracted, and no doubt burned long before this. “There’s just a chance he’d have to take off his gloves to open and close the camera properly, but I’m not betting on
it. It’s a smooth one to handle. And me with five chaps combing the place for it,” said Sergeant Moon sadly, “and it had to be young Brian who found it!”
The camera had been half-buried in the debris of dead flowers where old wreaths were dumped, in the most deserted corner of the graveyard. If Brian had not been tidying up the dump that morning, and happened to kick against metal, it might have taken them at least another day to work their way to it.
“It’s true, is it,” George asked, “that Robert Macsen-Martel—the late Robert, that is—left a trail of bastards all round these parts? Brian,” he explained wryly, “chose to account for himself. Quite frankly. According to him there are plenty more.”
“True enough. But the Jennings family, now, they’re a special case. Those three get on so well together, you wouldn’t believe. That’s what I call coming to terms with reality. You haven’t seen the mother, have you? She’s only thirty-nine now, and still as pretty as new paint. Linda Price, she was, went as maid to the Abbey—her old man must have been daft to let her. Nineteen, and a stunner, she was then. Exactly what you’d expect happened. Old Jennings, he’s twenty years older than her, he was a widower, and he had a soft spot for Linda. A sort of honourable bargain it was, and they’ve both kept it. He married her, and took on her boy—and gladly, I may say, his first wife never had any, and Linda’s never had any since, so it looks as if but for her slip-up he hadn’t a chance of getting a son. She’s never looked at anyone but old Eb since, she thinks the sun shines out of his high forehead. They got off lucky, all of ’em, they know how to value one another, even if they are a rum bunch. There’s many a family round here started off with a romantic love affair, and ended up with squabbling parents and problem children, and here’s the Jennings lot starting off with a business arrangement and ending as snug as old lovers, with an only child who hasn’t got so much as a complex or an inhibition to his name. Others,” said the sergeant sombrely, “weren’t so clever. There’s fathers round this valley that know their kids aren’t theirs, and make them pay for it, and what’s more, get it back off the kids with interest. And there’s others that don’t even know, and might very well do murder if they ever found out.”
“Not, however, this murder,” sighed George. “Plenty of reason for nursing grudges against the Martel clan, but what had this poor devil done?” He pondered for a moment, and human curiosity got the better of him. “Any special cases in mind? Locally?”
Sergeant Moon turned towards the window. Faintly through the wet trees beamed the distant lights of “The Duck”, and a mere murmur of music drifted in from the jukebox in the garden bar.
“Some time,” he said, “when you’re at leisure, go and take a good close look at Nobbie Crouch.”
“They’re taking the copper off guard tonight,” Saul Trimble said, flicking a beer-mat accurately in front of Joe Lyon and dumping a levelled-off pint of homebrewed on it without spilling a drop. He deposited his own pot carefully, for the corner table tended to rock slightly, but he knew his territory so well that it was no hazard to him. “Got to give the lads a few hours off in the end, and nothing’s happened so far, has it? I reckon even the spooks are bound to have a bit o’ respect for the English week-end. Back on duty a’ Monday.” He had an uncanny instinct for choosing the role that would most surely provoke whatever strangers he had hooked for the bar’s entertainment. Everyone had taken it for granted that the earnest researchers who had taken rooms at the hotel would carry their inquiries, after opening time, into the bar of “The Sitting Duck.” The natives did not use “The Martel Arms.” The reason was beer rather than caste, but the aliens were not to know that. They came slumming, and it was a wonder they didn’t bring their tape recorders with them, so quaint and primitive was Sam Crouch’s antiquated—and profitable—bar, and so renowned its characters. The visitors being believers, Saul had become a sceptic of the bleakest kind. He believed in nothing he could not touch, smell or drink. He deposited his lean rump in the red pulpit-cushions of the corner settle, and winked at Dinah Cressett across the crowded bar.
This was Saturday night, so everyone was there. The general hum of conversation—“The Sitting Duck” was never a noisy bar, they banished the young and loud into the garden pavilion—was constant, drowsy and warm, like the busy signature of a hive of bees. Over this background, dominant voices floated in emphatic moments like soloists in opera soaring out of the chorus, to subside again gracefully without breaking the continuous arc of rounded, communal sound. Not many pubs can command such orchestration and balance, these days.
“The mockers,” pronounced Eb Jennings, in an unexpected bass lead-in that seemed to emerge from the cellars under their feet, “the mockers may have blood on their hands by morning. Who took away the wreath that was meant to protect us all?”
On Saturday nights the Jennings family went their separate ways, each member with the family blessing on his choice: Eb to the bar of the “Duck,” Linda to the Bingo in the infant school, with her friend Mrs. Bowen, and young Brian, on his powerful pest of a motor-bike, to the weekly dance in Comerbourne, replete with beat groups blessed with incredible names, and heady with nubile girls. Brian was a heroic dancer and a Spartan motor-cyclist. His gear was stark, immaculately maintained and without insignia. In transit he looked more like one of Cocteau’s symbolic fates pursuing Orpheus than a modern, brass-knobbed, long haired, seedy enthusiast.
Within the memories of the regulars, however, Eb had never taken any active part in the entertainments staged impromptu at the “Duck.” Either something had got into him, tonight, or else this was the first occasion that had touched him nearly, and caused him to give tongue.
“In the midst of life,” he proclaimed, erect beside the bar like a prophetic angel, even his pint forgotten, “in the midst of life we are in death. Like our brother departed. No one should laugh who is not ready to go.”
For one instant he achieved such an impression that there was total silence in the bar. Then Saul said reasonably: “Well, nobody who’s ready to go is going to feel much like laughing, that’s for sure. And anyhow, you tell the police, Eb, lad, don’t tell us, we didn’t shift your parsley garland.”
“Nor call the coppers off night watch,” confirmed Willie the Twig. “After all, they’ve kept a guard on the church for three nights, and nothing happened. And they need plenty of men during the day on these jobs, they can’t wear out a constable minding the scene of the crime indefinitely.”
“Anyhow,” said Eli Platt sententiously, “lightning never strikes twice in the same place.”
“Have it your way, then,” intoned Eb, “but I tell you we’re not finished yet with this evil. ’Tis in the air all about us. ’Tis lurking there on the scene where the murder was done. I feel my thumbs prick and my blood chill when I go near that door.”
“There’s nothing to be afraid of,” one of the visitors explained with kindly condescension, “if you approach these phenomena in a scientific spirit. From what you’ve told us of the past history of the Abbey, this is a very interesting case which ought to be investigated by someone trained in the proper research techniques. What’s needed is accurate and detached observation. That’s impossible if one is afraid.”
Everyone looked at him with the awed respect of the simple villager for the visiting expert. He was a large, slightly flabby man with an egg-shaped skull fringed with reddish hair, and his pale, probing nose was peppered with russet freckles. He was earnest and patronising, and none too free with paying for drinks; but so innocently impervious to all double meanings that Dinah felt it was a shame to take advantage of him.
“I intend,” he announced, having drawn all eyes upon himself, “to keep watch myself tonight. Alone!”
He declared himself with all possible ceremony. The effect was pleasing up to a point. Everyone gaped at him with curiosity, speculation, and—he was sure—admiration. He had hoped also for a degree of anxious solicitude, but of this he could be less certain.
&n
bsp; “Sooner you than me, friend,” said Willie the Twig, with obliging (and quite mendacious) fervour. He lived alone in the back of beyond with his forests, his Land-Rover and a couple of setters, and habitually patrolled by night unarmed, even when he had reason to believe there were wood—or deer-poachers about; and so far no one had been able to identify anything in any real or imaginary world of which he could be said to be afraid.
“You’re venturing too far, ’tis daring the devil,” protested Eb, outraged. “You think you’re wise, my friend, but ’tis foolishness to walk too proud in the face of powers more than mortal.”
“Call it off till it stops raining,” offered Saul sportingly, “and we’ll make up a party. How about you, Hugh, lad?”
“Not me!” said Hugh, not without regret. “Sorry, but I’m driving in the Mid-Wales rally tomorrow. Got to get my sleep tonight, I shall be off about five in the morning. Any other time you plan a ghost-hunt, I’ll be delighted.”
“Oh, ah, that’s right, I forgot! Can’t afford to risk your chances in the hill run, that’s a fact. Anybody else game?”
Facetious offers of help and prophecies of doom came cascading from all directions in bewildering variety. The man from the research society was horrified. These attitudes were the outcome of ignorance, and did untold harm. How could extra-human forces be expected to manifest themselves and communicate where there was derision and noise and lack of understanding? Where no one believed except those who were afraid with the old panic terror, and no one at all had an open mind? He must and would be alone on his watch; it was an opportunity not to be missed. He had brought with him merely a raincoat, a notebook and a torch. His purpose was not to tape-record for his own glory, not to stand off an enemy, but to observe, to report truthfully, and to attempt to establish communication if the opportunity was offered.