Black Welcome

by Nigel Fitzgerald

  “Somebody climbed out a couple of hundred yards down the bank,” Duffy told her. “I can’t see who it could have been but Dr. Walton. Let’s get back to the house; you’ll probably find him waiting there.” He was not at all sure of what they would find at Peregrine’s house, but for the moment it seemed best to give the girl what encouragement he could. He helped her into the car, wrapped a rug round her shoulders and got in beside her. “You’ll have to go on a bit to turn, Myles,” he said to the driver. “Mr. Flynn will tell you where.”

  The estate agent accompanied them to the turning point, saying that he would pick up his own car as they passed it for the second time. It was parked only a short distance beyond the slip, though it had been effectually hidden by the twisting of the road; nowhere, however, was there a place where a car could actually have been driven off the road. Duffy could not believe that any traffic of any kind could have passed, even while Flynn was in the water, without the agent’s knowledge.

  “Nothing at all went by after I saw Dr. Walton slip into the water, I’m sure of that. A car passed just before I stopped mine though,” Flynn asserted in answer to a question from the detective. “We damn’ nearly met head-on at the boat-house bend. I was thinking about the noise of engines from the bay and not expecting to meet anything. I didn’t have time to see who was in it.”

  “Then it was coming from the direction of Miss Walton’s cottage. What sort of a car was it?”

  “A black Hillman Minx, I think, the same as my own–something like that.”

  It was a car of that description, Duffy remembered, that Mrs. Scully had seen going and coming from Cynthia’s cottage at an unholy pace. The road was the same, but the timing did not fit in; the small black saloon that had roused Mrs. Scully’s suspicions should have been clear of the area an hour and a half before Flynn had come into it. Oddnesses were multiplying yet they were all, Duffy supposed, susceptible of an innocent explanation; there was at any rate no harm in hoping.

  “Have you a telephone?” he asked Lua.

  “Yes–it’s the only one this side of the village.” The girl spoke unsteadily; her teeth were chattering. She clutched the rug tightly about her. “Why didn’t Perry come to us? Why didn’t he call out? He must have seen us. He must have known the–the way I felt.”

  “I’m afraid I can’t tell you, Miss Kennedy. We’ll have to wait till we get to the house.” If there was no good news for her there, Duffy thought, at least there would be warmth, dry clothes and a hot drink. “Where did you find the rubber mattress?”

  “Jamesy Flynn found it.” She had not spoken so familiarly of the estate agent in his presence. He had got out of the car to collect his Hillman but had promised to follow the others to the house. “We didn’t ask him where because it was just then that your Mr.––” She hesitated.

  “O’Callaghan, Miss,” the sergeant supplied.

  “Mr. O’Callaghan found the island Perry had climbed onto.”

  “Someone had climbed onto it surely,” the finder agreed, “and Flynn said it wasn’t him. You could see the marks in the mud, and the grass was still wet where whoever it was had been lying down–Dr. Walton, I suppose. ’Twas the little island nearest to where he met with his accident. The funny thing is, though, that it was the far side of the island.”

  “If he’s playing tricks on us, I’ll murder him,” said Lua with a sudden viciousness. Her eyes regained their brightness and she stopped shivering.

  If the affair were merely a practical joke, however, it was still going on; Peregrine had not returned home. At the gap in the tall hedge that was the entrance to his unkempt, but attractive, small Georgian house a middle-aged woman waited for news. She was his housekeeper, a big raw-boned Northerner whose manner concealed whatever anxiety she may have felt about her employer. That she did possess human feelings was evidenced by her treatment of Lua, who was dragged off willy-nilly to be warmed and dried and ministered to in other womanly ways.

  The housekeeper paused at the door to admonish the two detectives. “You’re all liable to get pneumonia out of this,” she told them eyeing their swimming trunks with disapproval. “Let ye go in there now and dress in the study where it’s warm. I’ve switched on the stove and left whisky and glasses on the table; I don’t want to be told it’s my fault if ye take ye’r death. Ye’ll find towels in the bathroom, next door.”

  Duffy’s main personal concern was to get rid of the mud which still daubed his arms and legs; first, though, he must ring up the Guard Station to initiate inquiries at the hospital and from private doctors about Walton. When that matter had been attended to and he had made room for Flynn in the bathroom he lost no time in dressing, but he did not get as far as having a drink. Decanter in hand, he was staring thoughtfully from one of the windows of the study when a large and hurtling figure suddenly appeared in the gap in the hedge which marked the boundary of Peregrine Walton’s property. It was with no less alarm than surprise that the detective recognised Cynthia Walton’s fat neighbour, Mrs. Scully, incongruously mounted on a bicycle; even at the distance that separated them it was possible for him to observe that the flush on her face far surpassed its normal ruddy hue. Setting down the decanter as quickly as was consistent with its safety, Duffy vaulted through the window. Only bad news, he felt, would travel so fast.

  Mrs. Scully’s speed, indeed, proved her undoing. She had negotiated the turning from the road without mishap, missing the hedge by a hairs breadth, but the acute angle of the avenue proved too much for her. The front wheel of her machine hit the grass verge; still gripping the handlebars, she rose a foot or two in the air, then subsided gently into a bed of chocolate-coloured wallflowers. Her stoutly-booted feet waved above her for a few seconds, as if still in the act of pedalling, before coming to earth with a thud.

  “Glory be to God!” she roared. “I’m kilt.”

  Duffy was at her side almost as she fell. Too late he regretted that he had not brought the decanter with him. If the power of her voice or of her hand was anything to go by, however, Mrs. Scully was in small need of stimulation; she grabbed the detective’s wrist.

  “The saints preserve us! I haven’t ridden one of them things since I was fifteen. I haven’t the wind to talk,” she announced in a stentorian bellow. “Thank God you’re here anyway. I didn’t know whether to leave the poor lamb or not, but she wants a doctor and an ambulance–and she wants them quick. We can only pray they’ll be in time.”

  Duffy roared to Sergeant O’Callaghan to get the Guard Station on the telephone, then he helped Mrs. Scully to a sitting position. “What happened?” he asked.

  “Ah! You may well ask.” She paused to adjust her skirt in a more seemly manner over her fat legs. “ ’Twas that strange devil in the car. I knew he was up to no good, the black-hearted way he was driving.” She allowed herself to be hauled to her feet. “Didn’t I tell you he had no business in the place–except murder. Oh, the saints preserve us.”

  Myles had turned the police car so that it faced towards the road; he now came over to help Duffy in propelling Mrs. Scully towards its open door. For all his admiration for her courage in tackling a four mile bicycle ride, the superintendent was hard put to it to refrain from shaking the old woman.

  “Tell me what happened to Miss Walton?” he implored.

  “ ’Twas what they call a booby-trap too.”

  “A booby-trap,” Duffy echoed in his astonishment.

  “They blew her up, God help her,” Mrs. Scully explained. Her voice had risen to a high pitch and she seemed to be on the verge of tears. “With an explosion,” she added and burst into a storm of sobbing.

  CHAPTER VII

  ON THE WAY to the cottage Duffy managed to get something more coherent in the way of information from Mrs. Scully. It appeared that the good woman, feeling uneasy about her neighbour, had decided to make sure that all was still well with Cynthia Walton before starting to prepare the evening meal for the returning workers of her own family. As she tramped r
ound the bend of the lane, Mrs. Scully had found her sense of foreboding becoming deeper and more urgent, though there was nothing to be seen that might justify her fears; the cottage basked in the clear spring sunshine, and Mr. K., the Irish setter, came bounding across the lawn to greet the visitor. It was as she stepped through the garden gate that Mrs. Scully had heard the explosion; for a moment she stood dumbfounded.

  “Well, I declare to God, Superintendent, my feet were rooted to the ground. I couldn’t stir if ’twas to save my life. It wasn’t so much the bang as the screech that followed it that put the heart across me. Well, listen you now, I’ve heard shrieks in my time, but this!–this was like a banshee crying out of hell-fire.” Mrs. Scully paled visibly at the recollection. “’Twas the dog that knocked sense into me in the latter end. There, was he, streaking round the house to help his mistress and there was I, standing useless as a tree. Well, I snatched up a big stone to defend myself with and I ran.”

  She had arrived none too soon; the shattered kitchen was on fire, and in it Cynthia Walton lay unconscious. Mrs. Scully made little of the fact that she had not only succeeded in dragging Cynthia to a place of safety but had also contrived to extinguish the flames; indeed she became almost apologetic about the latter feat.

  “I had to,” she explained. “I couldn’t leave that poor lady lying outside with nothing but the ground under her–and I couldn’t carry her to my own house; God knows that if I’d tried it might have killed her. As it is, she’s covered up in her own bed at least; ’twas all I could do for the poor lamb.”

  “What made you think the explosion was caused by a booby-trap?” Duffy asked.

  “Sure it must have been. There’s no gash out here on the bay. She don’t even use Calor gash. And what else would there be to blow up in a Christian woman’s kitchen when she’s just heating the water for her tea?”

  Duffy was unable to answer that. In the course of his quick look round the cottage he had observed that it was lighted by electricity but that there was no electrical means of cooking to be seen. Obviously the place was outside the range of Newtown Moore’s gas supply, even if the gas company still functioned now that the benefits of an efficient nation-wide network had been brought to this remote area by the Rural Electrification Scheme. The turf-burning range had been cold at the time of the detective’s visit, but he had seen nothing else to provide heat for cooking.

  “Was she boiling the kettle on the Rayburn?” he asked.

  “She was not but on the pressure-stove like always on Thursdays . ’Tis the day the poor lady goes to lunch across at the great house and she’d leave the range go out for Annie–that’s my daughter who works for her–to clean it out on Friday morning and get it going for another week. Turf makes a lot of dust, you know, though ’tis the cleanest fuel there is in the long run. But it doesn’t go off like a bomb, whatever.”

  At this juncture they reached the cottage. A quick examination assured Duffy that Miss Walton was still alive and that her injuries were not such as must necessarily prove fatal; it appeared that her right arm and the right side of her face only had been exposed to the force of the explosion, her hand in particular being horribly burned and mutilated. The detective supposed that it was pain and shock which had brought about unconsciousness. He hoped and prayed that the arrival of doctor and ambulance would not be long delayed, for of all injuries burns are the most difficult for the non-professional to treat. Mrs. Scully had covered the worst affected areas with clean towels–it was indeed from her description that Duffy had gauged the gravity of the case–and there was nothing else to be done for the victim for the moment. The detective turned his attention to the kitchen.

  Although the room had been, from a housewife’s point of view, devastated, it seemed to Duffy that this was the result of fire rather than directly of the explosion. In fact he found no damage which he could attribute to blast; the window was broken, but the glass had not been forced completely from its frame; while the broken remains of a tea-pot and some cups and saucers were strewn about the floor, odd pieces of china remained intact. Only one article in the kitchen looked as if it had really been in the wars; the pressure-stove had literally teen torn asunder. This pointed to the place of origin of the explosion, and Duffy’s nose suggested a cause. The whole place reeked of burnt petrol. Properly used pressure-stoves are safe, but they are not proof against the operations of fools–or knaves. The detective sought out Mrs. Scully who was sitting anxious-eyed beside her patient and keening pianissimo.

  “Could Miss Walton have filled her stove by mistake with petrol?” he asked.

  “What are you talking about?” Mrs. Scully looked as indignant as if a charge of gross indecency had been brought against her neighbour. “Is it this poor lady who’s always so careful, to do the like of that? Why she wouldn’t even let anyone smoke next or nigh the shed where the oil’s kept. She’d never allow a soul to touch the primus, only herself, and she’d have the cans marked so clearly a child couldn’t muddle them.”

  Duffy found clear confirmation of the old woman’s statement when he visited the shed; the word paraffin was painted in bold letters on an oil-drum as well as on a small can which was equipped with a spout, while the containers of petrol and lubricating oils were as clearly marked. It was evident that Cynthia Walton’s supplier had but recently made one of his, probably infrequent, visits; with the exception of the small paraffin can all of the containers were full. At the end of the can there was still half a pint or so of liquid; Duffy smelt it, then poured a few drops out onto his palm. It was unquestionably petrol.

  What followed from this fact? There was little likelihood that anyone could have filled the can with tire wrong fuel by mistake, but the substitution need not necessarily have been made with malice. Someone–Lua, for instance, when on the previous Tuesday she had borrowed Cynthia Walton’s boat–might have found it convenient to use a vessel with a spout for measuring out the petrol (with which a proportion of lubricating oil would have had to be mixed) for the outboard motor. It still seemed unlikely, however, that Cynthia could have topped-up her primus with the wrong fuel without detecting the error, women’s noses being generally more sensitive than men’s. It seemed to Duffy, too, that a mere topping-up with petrol would not have made the little stove so deadly. If on the other hand it had been maliciously filled to capacity with the spirit–well above the safety mark–it would have been transformed into a fire-bomb. Leaving any possible motive out of the question for the moment, Duffy set about looking for anything that might tend to confirm Mrs. Scully’s theory of a booby-trap. He did not have far to seek.

  Near the door of the shed was a drain covered with a grating; it was the next thing that Duffy chose to examine, though really a glance was enough for his purposes. It had occurred to him that, since the paraffin-drum was full to the brim, it might have been necessary for someone to throw away anything up to a gallon of oil from the small can in order to fill it with petrol. It was at once obvious to him that an appreciable amount of paraffin had indeed been poured down die drain very recently–and very carelessly, too, for the concrete surround was darkly stained and smelt strongly. The discovery was not conclusive but it was certainly significant, not the less so because it seemed to the detective that the pouring must have been done much more recently than the ransacking of the cottage. He was mentally wrestling with the implications of what he had found when he heard the sound of cars approaching along the lane.

  The first arrival was the ambulance, closely followed by the doctor’s grey Austin. The police car from Newtown Moore came a bad third; it had, however, stopped at Peregrine Walton’s house to pick up Sergeant O’Callaghan who had remained there at Duffy’s instructions to do some urgent telephoning. The sergeant brought no news of the missing swimmer.

  “What’s been going on here?” he asked after he had completed his report. “The place doesn’t look like a bomb struck it anyway.”

  “It could be worse.” Duffy recounted his observ
ations. “What puzzles me is the motive for this last business,” he pursued. “The circumstances of Peregrine Walton’s disappearance are too odd for one to accept it as a simple drowning accident. Whether he has just cleared out, or has been done away with, I don’t know, but something fishy is going on. Looking at that together with this apparent attempt to put Peregrine’s sister out of circulation, I can’t believe that the two things were merely coincidental. And it happens that they could both fit into a pattern with Joan Allison’s murder: Allison showed an interest in Hector O’Brien Moore’s arrival from New York only when she heard the name of the publisher he works for; it turns out that Peregrine is a personal friend of that publisher, and Cynthia at least had some connection with writing and with New York. But if the murderer’s object was to prevent Allison from communicating with Hector and if he has similar intentions with regard to the two Waltons, why didn’t he put them out of the way before they had met Hector? And why did he fall short of killing Cynthia? What was done to her looks more like spite than mouth-shutting. She will probably be badly disfigured, and she might have been blinded, in fact as things are she may not survive the shock, but whoever is responsible for it couldn’t have assumed that the blowing up of the primus would even be likely to kill Cynthia, or even to shut her mouth effectually for any length of time. It was more like a bad case of acid-throwing than an attempt at murder.”

  “A woman’s crime,” Sergeant O’Callaghan suggested.

  “That’s rather what I was thinking,” Duffy agreed. “Of course somebody may have been lurking about in the bushes to finish off the work of the explosion and have been frightened away by Mrs. Scully’s arrival at the critical moment. I must ask her––” He broke off as the doctor came hurrying out of the cottage. “Is Miss Walton going to be all right, do you think?” he inquired.