The Knocker on Death's Door gfaf-10

by Ellis Peters

  “She was a game old girl,” said Saul Trimble, when the regulars mustered in the bar of the “Duck” after the burial, still black-clad and sombre and exclusive, so like a private wake that all those who were not in the inner circle took one look within, and retired to the garden bar. “A game old girl, and never owed a penny.”

  The valley had a gift for epitaphs. But it was Sam Crouch who found the only possible one for Hugh, late in the evening when the clock was ticking its way round to closing-time.

  “Ah, well, he was his father’s son,” said Sam, wagging his round, simple, good-natured head.

  Eb Jennings swivelled a rapid glance from Sam to Ellie, who had just dropped a glass into the washing-up bowl with an almighty splash that swamped the floor behind the bar. “You can say that again!”

  “Nice-looking, though, you got to admit,” said Nobbie regretfully, mentally reviewing the revised list of interesting males. “Seems awful now, but you know, there were times when I rather fancied Hugh!”

  There was, thought Ellie, industriously mopping up the spilled water, always a bright side to everything.

  It was a week before Robert was allowed to fill in what gaps were left in the story. He had offered earlier, and his offer had been first vetoed by the doctors, and then courteously deprecated by the police, whose behavior throughout had been so considerate as almost to offend against his standards. When George finally came to sit beside his bed in the private ward borrowed for the occasion, Robert was propped up on carefully stacked pillows, his left shoulder completely encased in plaster and bandages. He had lost weight he could not afford to lose, and his pallor was so fine-drawn as to make him practically translucent, but his eyes were peaceful and resigned.

  “I’m only sorry,” said George, “that I was rather later than I intended getting back that night. But I wasn’t expecting anything to break, and if Miss Cressett hadn’t dropped her bombshell, nothing would have.”

  Robert’s face kept its guarded stillness at the mention of Dinah’s name. “I don’t know that I was too grateful to you, at first, for turning up at all,” he said frankly.

  “Never mind, you may have good reason to be grateful later,” said George equably. “I knew by then it was your brother we wanted. He was a shade too clever about worming his way into the cellar, so I thought, well, all right, let him, let’s see what happens. He dropped his evidence against you in the only place he could get at easily, covering the action with his handkerchief. He couldn’t know that we’d been sifting cleared soil back into that pit for more than an hour then, so if there was anything new to be found by going through that layer again, it was plain he must have put it there. If he could have dropped it into the heap of soil on the far side of the cellar, which hadn’t been sieved, then he’d have had a better chance of getting away with it. Though even then probably thinner than he realised. He was just that little bit too anxious. Before I went north I told Brice to go carefully over the floor of the trench again. And when he confronted you with the pencil, and you owned it for yours at once—well, we knew then who was our man. I’m afraid that piece of cold-blooded treachery hit you harder than anything.”

  Robert’s fastidious face had tightened into extreme pain even at the recollection, he flinched at every accusatory word levelled against Hugh, but he did not protest.

  “So I came back prepared to stick my neck out and charge him, and worry afterward about all the supporting details. But Miss Cressett beat us to it. And now suppose you tell your side of the story.”

  It was what Robert had been bracing himself to do for days. “Shouldn’t there be someone to record what I say?”

  “No, there should not. I haven’t cautioned you, and at present there’s no question of doing anything of the kind. Just talk, if you feel like talking. Tonight you don’t need a solicitor.”

  And Robert talked.

  “It was five years ago, a day early in March, I think, when this man Claybourne came to the Abbey asking for me. He knew about the family my father had left from the obituary, I suppose. My mother happened to be away for a week-end, which was luck, because it didn’t happen very often. The man had taken a bus straight from the station at Comberbourne, and got off at the end of our lane, so hardly anyone can even have seen him. He had his luggage with him, and he had a copy of his mother’s wedding group and certificate, his birth certificate, everything he needed to prove his legitimacy. What he wanted was money. He wasn’t an offensive type, really, rather anxious and harassed, he didn’t want me to think of his demands as blackmail, and he didn’t want to press his claims to the issue, all he was after was as much cash as possible. The last thing he wanted was anything to do with law or the police. I got the impression that he was in a hurry to get away somewhere for reasons of his own.

  “But there wasn’t any money to give him. My father’s— our father’s—debts weren’t yet cleared, and there was never much cash to spare. I couldn’t see anything for it but to go with him to our solicitor and tell the whole story, and get his advice about how to arrange things as justly as possible, and with the least shock to my mother. He wanted money and no fuss, I wanted my mother’s peace of mind let alone. I thought maybe we could find some way of raising a loan, since that was what he preferred, too.

  “Only in the middle of all this, Hugh came home.”

  He paused to moisten his lips. In a sense this was the most terrible moment of all, for if Hugh had not come in at that point there need never have been any crime, or any long and hideous purgatory after it.

  “I had to let him into it, too, he wanted to know who this person was. And he was furious. He wouldn’t hear of paying, wouldn’t let the solicitor into it or promise to keep the police out, to him it was plain blackmail. And yet he saw the proofs just as I did, and he knew they must be genuine. After all, what was surprising in it, except the fact that he found it necessary to marry her? We’d known many other cases, only different in that one particular. But that was the one that mattered. Maybe we hadn’t got much left to boast about, or to spend, but what there was Hugh was going to keep, and his name was his and was going to stay his.

  “Claybourne was frightened. He couldn’t afford delay or inquiry, he was desperately anxious to placate us, he swore he hadn’t told a soul where he was coming, he hadn’t any intention of ever asserting his right to the name, and nothing could ever possibly leak out, because no one else knew. All he wanted was money. And Hugh laughed with relief— genuine relief, you understand—and said that made everything simple. He went off into the old library—we were standing in the hall—as though he’d thought of something helpful. But what he came back with was the gun.

  “You’ve seen it. You know all about that. My father brought it home after the war, and he and Hugh used to practise at a target with it sometimes. Hugh was quite good. I haven’t good enough vision, and anyhow, I wasn’t interested. Even then I was slow to realise what was happening, or I might have prevented it. Claybourne was quicker. He simply took one look, and cast round for somewhere to run to. Hugh was coming down the stairs, between him and the door. He did what I suppose one would naturally do, ran towards that big window at the back of the hall, that looks as if it ought to have a door in it. But it hasn’t, when you get close you see how the ground slopes away outside. He looked round for some way of escape, and saw the light falling through the high window in the cellar, just at the foot of the stairs. You know it. It looks as if there must be a way out there.”

  “But there isn’t any way out. Yes, I know.”

  “And even the cellar door was locked—not that it would have made any difference, he couldn’t get away. I blame myself,” he said, “for being so slow to believe what I was seeing. But when you’ve lived all your life with someone— one of your family—and always thought of him as a normal human being… By the time I realised this was in earnest, Hugh was past me, I ran after him, but he was half way down the cellar steps, and all that happened when I caught hold of his arm w
as that the gun went off and the shot went wide—into the door. And Hugh turned round and hit me in the face. I was off-balance, and I went down sprawling on the stairs. And Hugh walked on down, not even hurrying, and fired again at close range. In the head. Just like throwing a dart in a pub match.

  “When I got there, the man was dead. Stone dead. Nobody was ever going to bring him back again. And Hugh was saying, what the hell are you fussing about, it’s all right, nobody knows he ever came here, there’s nothing to worry about, everything’s fine. Everything’s fine. And Hugh was always her favourite son. And anyhow, it was done. How do you make amends?

  “So I buried him. Him and all his belongings, all but the documents he’d brought with him, his wallet—all those things Hugh took and burned. My mother never knew anything. Never! Thank God!

  “And I’ve been in hell ever since.”

  It was a simple statement, made in the interests of accuracy, not at all a complaint, much less an appeal for sympathy.

  “Not Hugh, of course. He got a bit restive about being in the same house, afterwards, so he shrugged the whole thing off and went somewhere else, got himself a home and a job, even fell a little in love, I think—as much as he could with anyone but himself. As far as I know he was quite happy. Maybe there was just something vital left out of him. He even levered money out of me from time to time, in return for his discretion and good behaviour. I thought if I kept him content, nothing else might happen, never again. But of course it did. I thought maybe it was only a monstrous aberration, something he’d never really registered properly, and he’d grow out of it…” Robert’s long, sensitive lips curled in the most rueful of smiles. He heaved a long sigh, and was silent for a moment.

  “She was not a lovable person, my mother,” he said at length, choosing his words with scrupulous care, “and I wasn’t very attached to her, any more than she was to me. But I respected and admired her. She had standards I shared. And she loved Hugh. And she didn’t deserve that! What else could I have done?”

  He needed no answer from George, and George offered none. And in a moment Robert resumed strongly:

  “I’d tried at first to get the bullet out, but it was impossible without doing much more damage, so I left it alone and just plugged the hole and varnished over it. But you wouldn’t credit how visible that spot still was to me. It seemed to get more obvious every time I looked at it, and I looked often. Touching it up only seemed to make it worse. I thought of a knocker, as one way of hiding it for good. I had to hunt round for some months before I found one from much the same period, at an antique shop in Brighton. My mother never went into the cellar, or I should have had to tell her some story to account for it, and that would have been awkward, because later I had to concoct another story to cover a much wider field, and I doubt if I should have had the luck to make all the details fit. But she didn’t go, and she didn’t see it, and there wasn’t any problem, not then.

  “Only the time came when we simply couldn’t carry the burden of the house any longer. We had to get a grant, or something of the kind, and these negotiations with the National Trust began, and then I saw that the door would have to go. I never could get the flags back properly, it would have given everything away. We were going to be dealing with meticulous experts, and if they had a fine original door there, then it would have to be put into as near perfect order as possible. I was afraid they might want to relay the flags. So all I could think of was to make up that tale about the south porch of the church, and if there wasn’t much evidence for it, there wasn’t any to disprove it. When it came to the point, my mother wasn’t any problem. I had only to tell her that my father had once told me the story as a family tradition—the sort of thing he laughed about, but might occasionally trot out to amuse the children—and she accepted it as gospel, as she always did everything that came from him, however false. I said we’d happened on the knocker once among a lot of junk in what used to be the tack-room in the stable block, and he’d told me it belonged to this door, and said in his casual way that it—door, knocker and all—ought to be in the church porch if everybody had his rights, and some day he’d put it back there. That was enough for her. Whatever he had suggested, however frivolously, was sacred law to her.”

  “And the other story, ”said George, “the one about the monk found dead, burned by the sanctuary knocker—you made that up, too, didn’t you? Hoping Miss Cressett would pass it on, as she did.”

  “I had to. I knew someone else was going to be found dead there very soon. Hugh had just told me. He had a car to deliver that evening, and when he doubled back on foot through the churchyard he found this photographer… Hugh was always quick to grasp the immediate implications… and crazily quick to act. He never looked beyond.”

  “And you, as usual, were supposed to provide cover for him,” George said. “And for your mother’s sake you tried.”

  The pale lips tightened painfully. Robert was averse to any appearance of making excuses. “I’m sorry I put it like that. What I’ve done I’ve done, and I prefer to pay. It makes me even more ashamed that I made use of Dinah. I told you, I blame myself, no one else. But I was at the end of my tether then, to think it was all repeating itself, and all my fault.”

  “All, Robert?”

  “I was responsible—I mean a responsible person. He was not.”

  It seemed as good a division of humanity into two significant halves as any other, George thought, but it was hard on those who located themselves in the half that carries the burdens. He looked down soberly at the pale, drained face on the pillow, and totted up in his own mind the number of chargés he could bring, if he so chose, against this responsible person who would never deny one count out of all the possible counts with which society could accuse him. Concealing a death, accessory after the fact of murder, harbouring—why go on? There was a scapegoat handy who could save society a good deal of money and scandal, and Robert a prolonged refinement of suffering. Hugh had killed, let Hugh bury the dead, too, Hugh who had never lifted anyone else’s load in his life. It might count almost as virtue to him if after death he was made to bear Robert’s share of this as well as his own.

  “You’ll want an official statement from me,” said Robert, “about all this. I’ll make it whenever you think fit.”

  George thought fit that some judicious editing should be done on the story before it took any official form, but he did not say so. There is such a thing as a justice which dispenses with law—when it has the rare chance that hurts nobody and benefits many. In any case, Robert was going to spend weeks, probably months, under orthopaedic treatment.

  “I shall need only a short statement to include in my report. I’ll prepare a text and read it to you—in a few days, there’s no hurry now. Obviously there isn’t going to be any trial, you see. You needn’t worry about anything. I hope I haven’t tired you out too much—”

  “Not at all, Chief Inspector,” said the incorrigibly polite, dutiful, obstinate lips, pale with strain.

  “Good, then I think as Sister hasn’t been after my blood so far, I might venture to send her in for a few minutes. You’ve got another visitor waiting.”

  Dinah came to the bedside quietly and gravely, and sat down with a composure which was not maintained without effort and anxiety. She saw, but did not choose to see, the flickering succession of emotions that passed over Robert’s face, astonishment, alarm, dismay, despair, longing, hope, the resolute and heroic rejection of hope. Even when the face closed up on her and sealed itself like a sealed door, she declined to remember anything except the brief glimpse of longing, and the even briefer coruscation of hope, quenched implacably as soon as it was born.

  “Hullo!” she said. “They told me I could have just ten minutes. I had to see for myself that you really were going to be all right.” She had insisted on travelling with him in the ambulance that night, though herself, so they told her afterwards, in a mild state of shock, quiet, practical, determined and in nobody’s way, Dina
h suddenly grown up in an hour. An experience like that is going to leave its mark; it had left Dinah extended, enlightened, a person completed, mature enough to know all too well that her losses had not been great, and to turn a shrewd, honest, even predatory eye upon her gains. How curious! She had never once hunted Hugh, never for a moment been jealous of him!

  “I’m quite all right,” said Robert in a tightly controlled voice, “thank you. It was very kind of you to come.”

  He had recovered a little colour from somewhere, his thin face was suffused, even his spiky hair, dry as quills, had acquired a kind of vivacity in her presence, insisted on bristling in an awkward, almost a boyish manner.

  “Dave drove me into town,” she said, “they’re waiting for me in the car park.” She had to keep talking, or something would break. “They’ll only let in one person at a time to see you. Dave plans on marrying his Alix next spring. I thought you might like to know that some good came out of all this. In other circumstances he’d never have met her.”

  She was busy unwrapping the small parcel she had brought with her, and his eyes, for all their unhappiness, could not help following the movements of her fingers.

  “I brought you this—look! I wanted to find something permanent for you, not just flowers. Did I guess right?” She had gone to a lot of trouble to find what she wanted, not even knowing what it would be until she found it. Hospital toys should be special, intensely personal to both the giver and the receiver, and if possible inexhaustible. She had not even realised until now why she was so set on finding the right gift for him, never having considered gifts as a paradoxical mark of proprietorship.

  She set the little painted box on the edge of his bed, and lifted the lid, and the minute powdered musician at the minute spinet within began to make jerky little movements to the tinkling strains of an early Mozart minuet, the notes sweet and fine-drawn as spun sugar. It would have gone on playing for three of their ten minutes, but he was too weak to endure it for so long. He quivered feebly in his plaster, and turned his head away. He was not, in his own view, the kind of person she should be approaching, with her charity and youth and candour. The darkness in his own memory, the bitterness in his own experience stood like a vast wall between them.