Fall of a Philanderer

by Carola Dunn

  “We’ll certainly have to check.” Alec looked up at the streaming windows as thunder followed lightning. “But not this evening. I can’t send the men out searching the cliffs for his shack in this weather.”

  “Mr. Baskin knows where it is. That is, he’s seen it, though I don’t know if he could pinpoint the spot on the map. And it started out as some sort of shepherd’s hut that Mr. Anstruther knew when he was a boy. But I doubt either of them would happily lead you there in near darkness in the middle of a thunderstorm.”

  “It’ll have to wait till tomorrow. If Olive’s there, she won’t be going out either. I’ll send someone up in the morning. Thanks, love. Anything else you know that I don’t?”

  “’Fraid not. Not that I know of. Will you be home for dinner?”

  “I’m not sure. Don’t wait. By the time I’ve heard Vernon’s report on the post mortem, I rather doubt I’ll have any appetite anyway!”

  21

  By morning the storm had blown over, leaving streamers of cloud racing north-eastward before a blustery wind. Long swells surged up the inlet in spite of its sheltered position.

  “Don’t let the children play on the beach today,” Anstruther advised, sticking his head into the dining room at breakfast time. “The tide’s low now but as it comes in there’ll likely be freak waves, bigger and more powerful than the general run. We wouldn’t want the girls washed out to sea.”

  “Thanks for the warning.” Alec could only hope he wasn’t going to have to arrest the man, who seemed in so many ways a decent chap. If it came to that point, he’d leave the job to Mallow, under guise of letting the locals reap the credit.

  The girls were round-eyed. “You mean we could drown?” Deva asked breathlessly.

  “Not if you stay off the beach,” Daisy pointed out. “We’ll go for a walk. It’s fun on a windy day like this.”

  “I’ll go with you, if I may, Mrs. Fletcher,” said Baskin. “If that’s all right with you, old chap?”

  Daisy accepted the schoolmaster’s escort, and Alec gave his permission, not sure if he was playing the role of husband or policeman. Both, he supposed.

  On his way to the parish hall, he reflected that arresting Baskin would be almost as difficult as arresting Anstruther. He wouldn’t much mind putting Stebbins behind bars, though he was sorry for him with that flighty wife of his, and as for Coleman, it would be a positive pleasure.

  Olive Coleman must be found. She was almost certainly the only person other than the murderer who had seen what happened up on the cliffs.

  As he stepped across the threshold into the hall, his breath caught in his throat. After the fresh, brine-scented wind gusting in from the sea, the fug inside seemed almost thick enough to be cut with a knife. Several large, damp, hardworking policemen had slept and smoked therein. Sweat, wet wool, tobacco and stale beer mingled in a noxious miasma. Alec’s one thought was to find an excuse to escape.

  Mallow had already sent most of the men out to continue with enquiries begun yesterday. After an unctuous greeting, he immediately made Alec feel guilty by continuing, “A telephone call came last night, sir, after you left. I didn’t disturb you as there wasn’t much to be done about it till this morning, in my opinion. I hope you’ll agree.”

  “Who was it?” Alec tried to hide his irritation. “And what about?”

  “Leigh, the local constable at Malborough, found someone who saw a bicyclist riding along the main street just about when Mr. Anstruther claims to have been there. She couldn’t recognize him from the photograph—says he looks just like a thousand other naval officers in his uniform with all that face fungus. But she claims she might recognize him if she saw him again dressed as he was then.”

  “Was the bicyclist she saw bearded?”

  “She wouldn’t swear to it. Saw him at an angle from the side and rear.”

  “Damn! It doesn’t sound very hopeful. We’ll have to give it a try, but if there’s one possible witness, there may be more to come. We can’t start sending Mr. Anstruther all over the countryside to see people who may or may not recognize him.”

  “No, sir. I was going to send Sergeant Tumbelow to fetch her, but I thought I’d better check with you first.”

  Alec recalled his frightful ride with the sergeant. “Is she an elderly lady?”

  “I didn’t ask her age, sir,” Mallow said reproachfully.

  “Well, ring up Leigh and find out if she’s willing to travel in a motor-cycle side-car. If so, say we’ll fetch her.” As the inspector crossed to the telephone, Puckle approached and came to a sort of attention in front of Alec. “What is it, Constable?”

  “I bin thinking, sir.”

  Sternly repressing an urge to congratulate the man, Alec gave him an encouraging “Yes?”

  “What I thought is, seeing summun’s got to go and see him anyways, acos o’ the girl, it might be just as well to ask Sid Coleman did he notice anyone up on the cliffs Sunday arternoon. Acos he’s a wandering sort of chap and he mought as well have bin there as anywheres else. That’s what I thought.”

  “Good thinking, Puckle! I’ll go and talk to him myself.” Though the foul air was slowly dispersing through open windows and doors, Alec now wanted to escape his conscientious, efficient, unsettling inspector. Indisputably, Mallow was not the right person to question the timid beachcomber. “I know he can’t speak, but I gather he understands quite well?”

  “Aye, sir. Dessay he knows all the suspects by name, but anyhow, was you to show him their photygraphs, he could nod or shake his head.”

  “Hmm, it’ll be more difficult if he saw someone other than those four. But we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. Constable Leigh knows where his cabin is. He’s going up this morning to look for the girl. I’ll go with him.”

  Alec found himself once again bumping and rattling along in the lowly side-car, wishing fervently for his Baby Austin. As he clambered out in front of the Malborough police house, he said severely to Tumbelow, “Take it easy on the way back. We don’t want a willing witness too shaken up to see straight.”

  Tumbelow started a grin then swallowed it. “Yessir!”

  PC Leigh was a sturdy countryman of about thirty. He introduced his witness, Miss Flick, a thin woman with a sharp, twitchy nose, who had been walking her corgis on Sunday afternoon. Her nose twitched even more when she heard that Alec was a detective chief inspector from Scotland Yard.

  She started to explain that she had been in a side lane, approaching the main street, when a man on a bicycle had crossed in front of her. “He was almost past when I noticed him, so—”

  “We very much appreciate your willingness to help,” Alec said. “If you recognize the man in question, you can describe the circumstances to Inspector Mallow in Westcombe and he’ll ask you to sign a statement. Sergeant Tumbelow here is ready to take you over there now.”

  “Me too!” piped up a youthful voice. A tow-headed lad of nine or ten, eyes bright with excitement, dashed into the room. “Me mum would scrub me face afore she’d let me come. I’m a witness too, been’t I, Mr. Leigh?”

  “That you be, lad. This here’s Jackie Diggory, sir, and we won’t be asking what he was doing atop Mr. Benson’s orchard wall of a Sunday afternoon.” Leigh frowned darkly on the miscreant. “You see, sir, he didn’t notice the man on the bike but he’d swear to the bike, being as how he’s saving up his pennies to buy one for hisself and looking around him, like, to see what kind he fancies. This gentleman’s Detective Chief Inspector Fletcher of Scotland Yard, Jackie.”

  “No kidding? Cor!” Jackie exclaimed ecstatically. “And a ride on a motor-bike? I don’t care if I does get a dusting for scrumping owld Benson’s apples!”

  “Not on my pillion,” Tumbelow asserted. “In the side-car you’ll go, with Miss Flick.”

  Miss Flick wasn’t at all sure she wanted Jackie as her fellow passenger.

  Already chagrined at not being allowed on the bike itself, Jackie naturally took exception to this. “No m
ore does I want to ride wi’ such a fusspot,” he declared.

  It took all Scotland Yard’s authority to reconcile them to travelling together, but at last they were sent off. Alec rang up Mallow to warn him that the boy was coming. “Make sure you get a description of the bicycle from him before he sees it. And get Anstruther to put on the clothes he was wearing that day. Miss Flick’s evidence won’t be worth much at the best, but Jackie’s might if you do it right, Inspector.”

  “Always supposing it’s the right bike.” Mallow still hankered to arrest Anstruther, who had looked so obvious a choice at first.

  “Let’s hope,” said Alec. “I’d be happy to eliminate a suspect.”

  “Oh, Stebbins is out, sir. A young fellow just came in, was walking with his girl in the fields near those cottages and saw him in the garden at the end of the row. He knows it was round about three because the girl wasn’t supposed to be with him and she was afraid she’d get caught if she wasn’t home by half past, so they kept an eye on the time. Constable Puckle says there’s no reason he’d lie for Stebbins.”

  Perversely, Alec was disappointed. If Anstruther’s borrowed bicycle was identified, he’d be left with only Baskin and Coleman on his list.

  Where Baskin was concerned, so far the only reason to suspect him at all was a few odd questions and reactions. No motive had yet come to light, though someone was supposed to be working on it at the Yard—someone no doubt engaged with a dozen other cases whose chief investigators were at hand to chivvy him.

  Coleman seemed far more likely as a murderer, but the case against him was equally in need of an eyewitness. His daughter was the most probable person to have seen what happened. If he hadn’t killed her in his anger at her shameful behaviour, might he have done so to silence her? Either way, dead or alive, Olive Coleman must be found.

  Should she not turn up alive by tomorrow morning, Alec decided, he’d have to start a thorough search of the area between the Coleman farm and the murder site. That would mean mustering all the police he could persuade the CC to send him, and calling for volunteers.

  “How likely is it that the girl might have taken refuge with her uncle?” he asked Constable Leigh as they crossed Malborough’s main street and turned down a muddy lane between high hedges.

  “Not very, sir,” Leigh said apologetically, glancing from the mud to Alec’s suit and obviously wondering why so senior an officer should choose to tramp through the mire on a wild goose chase.

  “Why?”

  “Well, sir, she’s bin brung up to think him a disgrace to the family, and as for him, he keeps well away from them, being afeard o’ his brother. Rightly so, from what I’ve heard. He don’t come into Malborough for fear o’ meeting him.”

  “So you don’t know him personally?”

  “I bin out to his hut a few times, seeing it’s in my district, but you can’t hardly get to know a chap that can’t talk. A harmless, docile sort of chap he do be. I niver had no complaints about him.”

  “Not likely, then, to have taken a swing at Enderby to avenge the honour of the family,” said Alec with a smile. He hadn’t seriously considered Sid as a suspect, only as a possible witness.

  “Oh no, sir, not at all. I misdoubt he’d understand the notion—the honour o’ the family, I mean—and he’s no reason to care what becomes o’ her.”

  The beachcomber had no motive. Someone else besides Coleman might, however. “Did you ever hear of a local lad, one of Coleman’s farm-hands perhaps, being sweet on Olive? I assume she’s reasonably attractive, or Enderby wouldn’t have been interested. You’ve seen the only photograph we have. Even blown up it’s not much use.”

  “Aye, she’s pretty enough if you don’t mind a sullen look. Some men like a pout, but I niver knew a girl that pouted as didn’t turn into a bad-tempered woman.”

  “Very true, but Enderby wouldn’t concern himself with what kind of woman she’d grow to be.”

  Leigh shook his head with a frown. “Didn’t concern hisself wi’ aught but his own pleasure, seemingly. Far as I know, none o’ the village lads has a fancy to Olive Coleman. Her parents work her hard and she’s hardly ever seen in Malborough.”

  “The farm-hands?”

  “Now, they’re another matter. For all I know, they could all be mad after her, specially as she’s the only child and’ll come into the farm some day. Or would’ve afore she brought shame on the family. But they’re none o’ them young men. The youngsters all went off to War and not a one came back. Them as survived found greener pastures. We’ll take the left fork here, sir.”

  After another stretch of muddy bottom, the lane started rising. Then the hedges became banks, and soon unfenced, heather-clad slopes spread to either side. Leigh turned off on a nearly invisible path winding through purple-belled heather, bracken and occasional clumps of bright yellow gorse. At least the footing was much drier here, in spite of last night’s downpour. The blustery wind was invigorating.

  They climbed over the brow of a hill. Another, higher, rose before them but Leigh skirted its foot. As they rounded the shoulder, the next valley came into view and Alec saw a clear, shallow brook. What he at first took for a heap of dead bushes resolved into a brushwood fence surrounding a patch of cleared ground where vegetables, gooseberries and currants struggled in the poor, thin soil.

  On the opposite slope, explaining the need for the fence, sheep stopped grazing the wiry grass to stare at the intruders. The only sounds were their intermittent bleating, the babble of the brook, and the cry of a solitary seagull circling overhead.

  The original stone shepherd’s hut must have blended perfectly into the background of the rocky crag standing sentinel at the head of the valley. Sid Coleman’s repairs and additions were nearly as well camouflaged, built mostly of wood weathered to a silvery grey by sea and sun. The roof was patched with sheets of corrugated iron, rusting to the hue the bracken would take on as autumn approached.

  Pausing, Leigh surveyed the scene. The coconutty fragrance of gorse filled Alec’s nostrils. Attuned now to the hush, his ears picked up the constant hum of bees among the heather blossoms.

  It was almost possible to envy Sid.

  Leigh broke the peace. “No smoke. He may not be—” He stopped as several short, sharp sounds rang out: hammer on nail, at a guess. “No, he’s here all right.”

  “We don’t want to alarm him. You go ahead. He knows you.”

  The constable trudged ahead. “Sid!” he called. “Hulloa there!”

  The beachcomber appeared, hammer in hand, from a lean-to shed to one side of his cabin. Alec had no time to take in his appearance before, with a wordless cry, he bolted.

  Leigh was already in motion when Alec shouted, “Go after him! I’ll look around.” If the girl was there, they didn’t want her taking to her heels too.

  Disappearing around the cabin, Sid had a twenty-yard lead over Leigh. By the time Alec reached the far corner, the fugitive was nearing the top of the crag.

  Police boots were no match for bare feet that clung to the rock like a monkey’s. Leigh slithered down the short distance he had managed to climb and made for the steep, scrubby slope to one side. As he scrabbled upward, Sid appeared momentarily in silhouette against the sky, then vanished over the top.

  A thud within the cabin made Alec whirl.

  He found himself facing a small, glassless window. Above it hung a piece of heavy tarpaulin, hooked up out of the way with a bent wire, a sort of outside curtain or shutter against foul weather. A small part of Alec’s mind admired its ingenuity, while the rest concentrated on peering through the narrow opening.

  No one was visible, but his field of view was limited. Straining ears heard no movement inside.

  Leigh was making a fair racket as he toiled up the slope. Small stones rattled down behind him and he swore as a clump of grass came loose in his hand. Under cover of the noise, Alec slipped around the hut, noting how chinks in the wood and stone walls were stopped up with tarred slivers of cork. Si
d Coleman might be dumb but he was no idiot.

  Alec came back to the west side, facing down the valley, without seeing a soul. The door stood open. He stepped into the doorway and stopped, scanning the room.

  A sleek grey and black-striped cat was lapping water from a tin bowl on the floor. It gave him a supercilious look, leapt up with a thud onto a battered old door which served as a table, and thence sprang to a shelf where an ancient knit garment made a comfortable bed. Obviously regarding Alec as unimportant, it started to wash with an air of deliberately ignoring him.

  The cat was the only occupant. Alec searched the room, a matter of a few minutes, without finding any trace of the presence of a female. The bed was heaped heather spread with sailcloth and a holey blanket. The sole chair had been rush-bottomed once; its deficiencies were compensated for by the lid of a cask and a cushion so salt-stained and faded that its original colour was unguessable. A sea-chest with a broken lock held tattered oddments of clothing and another blanket. All were as clean as soapless washing in the stream could make them.

  The Panama hat Belinda had given Sid hung from a nail, several feathers stuck in its pink and purple band. Alec was sorry his daughter had befriended the beachcomber. He was used to the awkwardness of Daisy taking one or more suspects under her wing, but how was he to explain to Bel if he had to arrest her protégé?

  Because why should Sid run for it if he was simply an innocent witness?

  22

  “Bosh!” said Daisy. “Of course he ran away! He’s absolutely terrified of the police, ever since Constable Puckle locked him up for the night. If you’d gone alone, without the bobby in uniform, he wouldn’t have taken to his heels.”

  To put it mildly, Alec had not been pleased to find Daisy waiting for him in the parish hall when he returned from his fruitless errand to Sid’s shack. But he had let her listen while he told Inspector Mallow and Sergeant Horrocks that the beachcomber, having fled, was to be considered a suspect.