She pushed the boy away from her. Mosley took his leave.
There were strangers in the Plough and, from the equipment stacked in the corner, Mosley recognized them as the men Brad Oldroyd had told him about, who were surveying with theodolite and plane-table the depressions that the space vehicle was supposed to have made in the turf.
“Here’s somebody you ought to meet, Mr. Mosley.”
“Bloody interesting, this is. What was it you called them, sir? Railway lines?”
The group had fallen under the tutelage of Tom Appleyard (of sheep under mushroom fame) and Brad Oldroyd (fortynine ghosts). Both were clearly in visionary mood.
“Mr. Mosley’II be very interested, sir,” Tom Appleyard said, with a plum-palated respectability that no stranger would recognize as an affectation. “Mr. Mosley saw these things too. He went on telly about them.”
“I’ve been explaining to these people,” Brad Oldroyd said, shrewdly putting Mosley into the picture, “how these television people happened to be here when this spacecraft came down. We all saw that luminous thing in the sky, didn’t we, Tom?”
“You saw it, too?” one of the strangers asked Mosley.
“I saw something.”
It had to be careful treading, when Appleyard and Oldroyd got going.
“It’s fascinating. These points where the thing landed: we’ve plotted them carefully, and there’s no doubt they’re on an intersection of the prehistoric straight tracks. I don’t know whether you’re interested? I’m sure you’ve heard of ley lines?”
Mosley conveyed what they took to be a sense of agreement.
“Well, clearly this spot is the apex of a Pythagorean triangle whose hypotenuse runs through the old stone circle at Lower Brandreth, then directly under the altar of St. John’s Church at Hollow Row. And the base-line, which connects Broken Cross with Leaning Hill. if produced north-west, runs through the very spot where the northern extremity of this saucer, or whatever you like to call it, finally landed. Obviously they homed in on it.”
“Aye,” Tom Appleyard said, “and if you stood in the dead middle of where they parked it, and drew a straight line through this pub, it would run like a plumb-line through the public bar of the Partridge at Ewedale, then six miles further on through the Hen and Chickens at Millstone Bridge. And it ends up—we know, because once when we were youngsters, Brad and I walked it with a compass—dead in front of Robert’s Oyster Bar on Blackpool front.”
They were by nature a humourless bunch, and it took some seconds for it to dawn that their legs were being pulled. They were amateur scholars who took their specialism seriously—who had done enough reading of the received authorities to have mastered the jargon and mythology of their subject. But they had closed their minds to anything that might refute what they wanted to believe. One of them managed an unconvincing grin.
“Good joke, my friend, but …”
It was forced—and only barely tolerant.
“And did I understand that someone in the present company said that you were a policeman?”
“Aye, that’s true.”
“With local responsibilities?”
“Detective-inspector,” Mosley said, keeping his voice low, as if he were saying something that was not known in the Plough. He was aware of an exchange of looks between these men, of a whisper from one to the other.
“We think there’s something you ought to see. Something else we found up on the hillside.”
At least they had the sense not to let Tom Appleyard and Brad Oldroyd hear this.
“If we could meet you outside—say in about five minutes’ time—without drawing attention …”
They began to gather up their gear and vacate their seats, which was as well, because another gang of men was coming in: workers who had just knocked off in the quarry. Bernard Hunter’s father was among them. It was pay night—a pint on the way home: four, five or six, more likely. The limestone dust in which they worked gave a convincing excuse of something to be slaked. Imitation and sensation: but hardly experiment. Ted Hunter was a coarsely big man, with an old-fashioned buckle-belt. If he did ever come to hear of the glue-sniffing, he would be the one to believe in bringing up a child in the way that he should go.
When Mosley came out of the pub, the key-line enthusiasts had moved a little distance away.
“I’d hate to think we were leading you on a wild goose-chase, Inspector.”
“We thought at first, you see, that the thing might have tried to make a forced landing, and had scored up the ground. But come to think of it, it couldn’t have got in amongst the trees without coming to damage. It’s this way, Inspector—a bit of a rough climb for half a mile or so, I’m afraid.”
They conducted him along a lane that he knew well enough, leading past Matthew Longden’s Hadley House, its facade expressionless and hard-hearted against the Pennine elements. Then they took a field-track that skirted a farmyard, crossed the corner of a rough meadow where store-cattle were pasturing and entered a small wood of beech, ash and oak. After five minutes of walking what was barely a footpath at all, the leader held a hand up for them to stop.
What he showed Mosley bore a close resemblance to a newly filled grave. The earth had been recently turned, and no effort seemed to have been made to conceal or camouflage it. Perhaps whoever had done it had been relying on the unlikelihood of visitors.
“We thought at first, you see, that their vehicle might have made some sort of ricochet before coming in for its final landing. But I can see now that that can’t have been the case.”
“And then there was this.”
One of them had stooped down into the vegetation and picked up something that he had obviously handled before. It was a very damp, very dirty, very old-fashioned woman’s hat, an irremediably misshapen creation in plaited straw.
“When did you discover this?” Mosley asked them.
“This afternoon—three to four hours ago.”
“Did you say anything about it in the pub?”
“No. We could see that would have been unwise. One of us went down to the village police-house, but the constable was out somewhere on duty. We were going to call on him again before we went home.”
They seemed to be in favour of fetching digging equipment straight away, and there was no lack of volunteers eager to do the work. They seemed generally disappointed in Mosley’s lack of keenness: but Mosley knew that whoever was under that earth would still be there when Joe Ormerod came back from wherever he was. He managed to get the amateur archaeologists away from the site, and swore them to silence. He walked with them back down into the village and watched them drive off in their two cars before climbing the hill again to call on Matthew Longden.
Chapter Five
Hadley Dale’s sole imposing residence had become Matthew Longden’s burning desire the moment it had come on the market. The house and the man had the same roots, the same robust contempt for showmanship. It was not very big, as country properties went. It had only five bedrooms, though they were large ones, and it stood in two acres of hillside, lightly wooded. There was no luxury here—and, especially, no show of luxury. Under earlier ownership there had been more extensive woodlands, and a farm on the flank of the supporting hill. But Longden had sold that off, neither wanting to manage it, nor believing that he could. There were some who said that it was the austerity of Hadley House that had finally driven Betty Longden to leave her husband, that he ought to have known that when he brought her there. But there was something about the property that Matthew could not resist. It did not make him lord of the manor. Hadley Dale did not acknowledge a squire. But who could tell what pretences were going on inside Matthew Longden’s mind? Certainly he had been able to persuade himself that he was Hadley Dale’s leading light; and he gave no one reason to dislike him.
The hour was still early as Mosley approached, but too late for it to be likely that Matthew Longden would be out of the house. Sometimes, even nowadays, he did try to po
tter pain-wracked in the immediate neighbourhood of the house, Lottie never far beyond call—but never when the chill of day’s end was beginning to make itself felt.
Mosley approached directly, up the drive littered with fallen twigs. Ted Hunter did some of the heavier work about the estate out of quarry hours. But he achieved none of the fastidious neatness that Longden would have demanded in his more active years. The signs were that Longden knew these days that he had to be satisfied with what he did get done.
As Mosley approached, Longden was standing in one of the bay windows at the front of the house. He waved and moved towards the door of his sitting-room, opened it with his weight taken by the knob, came down the hall and let Mosley in. A moment later, he was gripping Mosley’s hand in long fingers, hard, rather than sinewy; bones that it hurt him to move, knuckles that he could no longer straighten.
“It’s been months, if not years, Inspector. Yet my spies tell me that you’ve been three times to Hadley Dale in the last six months without calling. You’ll take a drop of something? Even if only to give me the excuse to take a drop myself?”
Baroque music was being played very loudly on an up-to-date stereo system. Longden turned the volume down—but not low enough to make intense conversation easy.
“I’m sure that whatever you’ve come for doesn’t take precedence over Telemann.”
Whisky: like a poker bringing life to a fire that needs it at just that moment. Mosley took in the room. There was a cold tidiness about Matthew Longden’s books, his records, his gleaming brass fender, his empty ashtrays, his uncrushed cushions. For years, between Betty and Lottie, he had looked after himself, and housekeeping had always been for him synonymous with regimentation. But he had never had any military experience; it was from book-keeping that he took his concepts of good order. One must suppose that in the last few years Lottie had introduced her own elements of warmth and living somewhere into the household. But Mosley looked round in vain for any residue of her influence in this room. There was not a picture, not an ornament that did not belong to Matthew Longden—not a vestige of reading, letter-writing or needlework—not a suggestion that Lottie Pearson had ever shared this home. Had he kept her, then, to her own small corner of it?
Matthew Longden followed the movements of Mosley’s eyes and interpreted them correctly.
“I know why you’re here, Inspector. I know what you’re looking for. You are under the impression that I am the sort of man who would allow my housekeeper to take over my living-room?”
So was he going to pretend that that was all she had been to him? Mosley knew him as a man of that kind of pride—a maker of the sort of moral image that could convince himself perhaps more than others. But his face did not entirely support his aplomb. Something was amiss with Matthew Longden. He was not looking exactly tortured, not quite disillusioned—and he almost always looked wearied these days. But Matthew Longden, who had always seemed to live above emotion, had been emotionally bludgeoned: Mosley thought—possibly.
There was not a soul in Hadley Dale who believed that Lottie Pearson had been no more to Matthew Longden than a housekeeper. One had only to see them together—and that not only in the early days—to know what they meant to each other. And besides, Lottie’s reputation was not that of a woman who would stick for years to the kitchen and linen cupboard. No one doubted that she housekept to perfection. But it was not for that that she had come to the big house.
“She won’t be coming back?” Mosley asked bluntly.
“I wouldn’t take her back.”
There was no depth of feeling behind the statement. It was plain. It was true to the code that had always governed Matthew Longden. He was not a patient man, had never pretended to be. He was not a tolerant man, had never seen virtue in putting up with what he did not like.
The music played itself to a stop. The arm returned to its rest. Longden made no move to switch off the set. Every movement seemed to rack him—even reaching for his glass.
“When did she actually go?”
“Wednesday night. In the middle of the night—I can only suppose. She brought me my nightcap. I had to cook my own breakfast. And may I say that that is no novelty in my life?”
If there were any touch of bitterness about that, he might even have been satirizing himself.
“She had given you no hint that she was going?”
Matthew Longden spread helpless hands.
“Hint? I have never lived by dropping hints—nor wondering whether they are being dropped to me. If you mean, did she say she was leaving: no—she did not.”
“You did not hear her go?”
“Do you fancy that I lay awake at night listening in case she did?”
“I just wondered whether you heard any motor-car engine. You have no idea how she got away from the village?”
“I must assume that she had an accomplice. I am not unaware that there has been idle gossip about her and her attitude to men. It is common knowledge that she has had two disastrous marriages. I can believe that in some circumstances she would act on impulse rather than judgment. I have always told myself that this was none of my business. I remember talking to you when it was decided that she should live here. She was, and until Wednesday night remained, an ideal servant. You may remember that it had always been my intention to reward her generously.”
“How many of her belongings did she leave behind her?”
“None, except for a few trifles that I would imagine she intended to abandon. I have put those into an old case, which I will have taken down to her mother-in-law’s if she does not claim it soon. Why are you asking questions in this tone, Inspector? Am I suspected of some criminality?”
“Not at all,” Mosley said. “A woman has disappeared. I have always found it better to ask questions before memories are dimmed.”
“Disappeared, you say. That is making a melodrama of it. She has left. She left without giving the proper month’s notice. What can I do about it—other than shrug my shoulders?”
“You have no idea where she can have gone? You had no reason at all to think that she possibly might?”
“Why should I?”
“Were you aware, at any time she was in your employ, that she had any contact of any kind with either of the two men in her life?”
“I naturally assumed not. But I did not read her letters nor have her followed when she went down to the village shop, or to see Mrs. Pearson.”
Matthew Longden was letting it be seen—intended to let it be seen—that his patience was wearing thin. Mosley saw no point at this stage in allowing it to wear out.
He had known Longden for years. There had been a time when the two of them had had a good deal of respect for each other. They had first met when Longden was at the zenith of his profession, staid and influential, committee chairman of Rotary, honorary auditor of many of Bradburn’s charity accounts, keeper of many men’s financial secrets. His wife, of course, was still living with him in those days: a handsome, quiet woman, poised and generally liked. She was believed to have brought quite a share of money into their home from her distant roots in Shropshire. In the days when the couple had been living in Bradburn, it had been quite unthinkable that her eyes would ever falter towards another man.
Mosley was then a Detective-Sergeant, deeply entrenched in the subsoils of Bradburn. One day, Longden, chancing to meet him in the street, had asked him if he would drop in at his office when he could find the time. Mosley had found time immediately.
“Sergeant—more than one little bird has whispered to me that you’re a man who knows how to be discreet.”
He obviously had something on hand that had to be managed discreetly. Longden paused, waiting for a reaction. Mosley waited, not giving any.
“What do you know about Ernest Weatherhead?”
Weatherhead was not quite the Uriah Heep of Bradburn. His desire to do a proper job was too genuine for that. And by anybody’s standards, he was doing a proper job. In all but title
he was manager of Raven’s furniture shop in Cornmarket Street: not in title, because that might have implied that Roderick Raven ought to be paying him what he was worth.
“I’ve just finished Raven’s accounts. A model in every respect but one. Roddy Raven doesn’t know what a gem he’s got in Ernest Weatherhead. You could use his ledgers to illustrate a text-book.”
Matthew Longden, not given to dramatization, was building up to something.
“There’s only one thing spoils the picture. Ernie’s short of cash in hand. Two hundred and fifty pounds, to make it a round sum. The last day’s takings of the financial year.”
Mosley was silent for long enough to show that it had sunk in.
“What’s Raven say about it?”
“I haven’t told him. I’ve come to see you first.”
“Only Raven can initiate action, of course.”
“Which he won’t. The scandal would be bad for trade. There’d be no point in being awarded costs that Weatherhead couldn’t pay. But he’d sack Weatherhead. And the word would go round: the Chamber of Commerce, the Masons. Weatherhead would be lucky to get a job wheeling a barrow.”
Longden was studying every nuance in Mosley’s eyes, looking for trust—or contra-indications. They were not sure of each other yet.
“To Roderick Raven, two hundred and fifty is nothing. For Ernest Weatherhead, it’s unattainable. I like the young man,” Longden said. “I could help him out—but I don’t know whether I ought to. I want to know what he’s been up to, and why. And I don’t want it to get round that I’m going soft. I am not suggesting for a moment, Sergeant, that you do something of which your superiors would disapprove. But you have a certain reputation—a wind that bloweth not where it listeth not …”
Mosley considered it. He would have a look, anyway. But he was not sure how much he would tell Longden of what he found.
“I’m not asking you to commit yourself in advance. Sergeant. If what you discover seals your lips—or demands inevitable action, you must do as you see fit. But if Weatherhead’s troubles are genuine—if he could be saved by an interest-free loan—and if his attitude is reasonable—I might be tempted to make an unorthodox move. It wouldn’t do, of course, for any of my other clients to get wind of it.”
Mosley by Moonlight Page 4