They Died in the Spring

by Josephine Pullein-Thompson

  Paul put down his cup. “Random and those two constables they sent up from Crossley to help him, didn’t seem to have much control over the crowd,” he said. “As I see it, press photographers shouldn’t be allowed at funerals; I mean they’re private affairs, they’ve nothing whatever to do with the general public. And as for the sightseers, well, it’s extraordinary to me to see so many people with no work to do.”

  “It was a bit of a Roman holiday,” agreed Aubrey. “I suppose they were all trying to pick the murderer.”

  “Mrs. Hands had heard that the police were about to arrest poor old Harris,” said Jean. “She was in a great state of excitement about it when she came this morning.”

  “I wonder if it’s true?” Paul brightened a little at the thought. “But I don’t think it’s very likely, do you? I mean, that Harris killed Father and Hilda? He’s always seemed rather a peaceable sort of chap to me.”

  “He could have gone crackers, I suppose,” suggested Jean.

  “He obviously has schizoid tendencies,” said Aubrey. “He wouldn’t stick living alone in the shepherd’s hut if he hadn’t, but there’s no sign that they’re out of hand, is there?”

  “I rather hope it was him,” said Jean. “I mean, if he was schizoid he wouldn’t be hanged, would he?”

  “I hope that’s not the answer,” Paul told her; “because if it is I shall always feel that we were partly responsible. I mean, that turning him out of the cottage and all that sent him over the brink or round the bend, whichever it is.”

  “Paul, what terrible twaddle you do talk,” exclaimed Mary Barclay. “Really, if you’ve nothing more sensible to say, you’d better fetch the car round from the church; I think I’ll go back to Stones and lie down.”

  Paul looked furious, but he got up and left the room without a word. Jean and Veronica began to talk of the children: of Lucy’s teething, William’s stomach and Simon’s latest bon mot.

  When Paul had fetched the car and the Barclays had gone, Aubrey Sinclair carried the tray of teacups to the kitchen. “Really, your mother,” he said to Veronica who was hastily washing the crockery they’d used for lunch; “she can be the absolute bottom. Why did she have to speak to Paul like that? He made a perfectly reasonable remark. I don’t know how he stands for it and, if she ever wants to live with us, the answer is definitely no.”

  “Poor Ma, I’m sure she wasn’t always like that; it’s just that she’s been hurt so often that now she spends all her time trying to hurt back; it’s awfully sad, Aubrey.”

  “She ought to know what it’s like to be hurt and lay off other people,” argued Aubrey.

  “But it hardly ever happens like that. Happiness is the only thing which really improves people, ordinary people anyway.”

  “Well, considering your parents and the atmosphere you must have been brought up in I think it’s remarkable that you and Paul have turned out as well as you have. I’d better not speak too soon, though; I read somewhere that when an overbearing father dies the son automatically takes on some of the hated characteristics; if so, God knows what Paul will turn into now.”

  “Time to fetch the babies,” said Veronica, abandoning the half-done washing up. “Do you think that having them all afternoon like this will influence Lesley? If only she’d get married again and have some more herself.”

  *

  When Browning returned from Bretford he found the Chief Inspector eating tea at an envelope-strewn table in a quiet corner of the residents’ lounge.

  “Any luck?” asked Flecker, through a mouthful of buttered toast.

  “Yes, it’ll just about settle the matter, I shouldn’t be surprised,” Browning answered peeling off his British warm, which he had worn for vanity’s sake all through the long sunny day. “Mr. Norton seems a reliable old man—the kind to make a good witness—and he’s quite definite that it isn’t the Colonel’s gun at all—it belongs to Master Paul Barclay himself. Norton’s known both father and son for a good many years; they were regular customers and each had an account, so we were able to check up on his memory; the gun that killed the Colonel was sold to Master Paul in 1948. The Colonel had a pair of twelve-bore shotguns by a different maker; I’ve got all the particulars in here,” he added, producing his notebook.

  “And what about Mrs. Garfield’s telephone call?”

  “Oh, she made it all right, there was no shaking her. She thought it was just before six.”

  “Good,” said Flecker, gathering up his envelopes. “You’d better ring for some more tea.”

  Chapter Seven

  Friday began warm and wet. After breakfast Flecker stood at the dining-room window idly watching the fine spring rain fall on East Street, for the Chief Constable had demanded a verbal progress report at the tiresome hour of nine-forty-five.

  “No time to get anything done first,” complained Browning, as he painstakingly folded the newspaper back into its original creases; “still, I suppose he’s got to come over from Bretford. Well, I’ll pop out and do a bit of shopping while we’re waiting. I’d better get you some sticking plaster. You keep knocking that thumb of yours and a dirty handkerchief wound round it doesn’t look too good, not to mention germs.”

  “Oh yes, thanks,” said Flecker vaguely. “Don’t be too long; I want a word with Miller before the boss arrives.” He began to search his pockets. “Have you any change?” he asked. “I’m going to telephone Barclay. If I can, I shall make an appointment for ten-thirty,” he grinned. “Then Dobson won’t have a chance to prolong the agony.”

  Inspector Miller had had a useful interview with Colonel Barclay’s bank manager. It seemed that since the colonel’s retirement from business the farms had been less profitable or, perhaps an ambitious modernization programme had failed to pay off. It appeared, too, that Barclay senior had had an unfortunate flair for climbing on agricultural band wagons too late; he had gone in for milk, bacon and eggs in turn as the demand for each product had passed its peak, and then switched from one waning market to the next with heavy capital losses. “They’re not on the rocks by any means,” Miller explained, “but he couldn’t have gone on at that rate for more than five years. Then you wanted to know whether there had been any unusual cheques. Well, there weren’t any large ones, but his weekly cheque has been up by five or six pounds several times lately, which wasn’t very popular seeing that he was asked to reduce his overdraft. I’ve got a statement of his cash withdrawals during the last couple of months for you.”

  “Thank you very much,” said Flecker, taking the statement and glancing at it briefly. “Well, there are certainly two people who wouldn’t have enjoyed seeing money being poured down the drain.”

  “You’ve got your eye on the family, I suppose,” Miller broke off abruptly as the Chief Constable came in. “Good morning, sir,” they said as they got to their feet. Spring had made no impression on Dobson’s dour manner; he answered them with an ill-tempered grunt, seated himself at the desk and demanded, “Well, Flecker, are you getting anywhere?” Flecker pushed back his hair, produced his envelopes and assembled his thoughts. “We’re progressing, I think,” he said.

  “Have you traced the young woman’s boy friend?” demanded Dobson impatiently.

  “Not for certain, sir, but we’ve got a line on him, I think, and we have unearthed a few quite relevant facts about the rest of the cast. First of all, Harris—Harris—the jobbing gardener—admits to being in the woods on Saturday night and hearing a shot at approximately six-ten. Then the shotgun found beside the Colonel’s body and identified as his, is stated by a Bretford gunsmith to belong to Mr. Paul Barclay and not to his father.”

  Miller whistled and Dobson sat staring straight in front of him while he considered the implications of this news.

  “It was Paul Barclay who identified the gun as his father’s,” he said at length; “that’ll take some explaining. Now I begin to see how it fits in; of course he’s the boy friend. He’s been carrying on with Miss Schmidt and the Colonel caught
them at it, probably in Well Cottage. He objected, probably he threatened young Barclay, who followed him down into the woods, shot him and switched guns. Then he went back to the cottage and told Miss Schmidt what he had done. She wouldn’t agree to keep quiet so he killed her too and put her body in the well. There you are. Why didn’t that fool Sims get an independent identification of the gun? We’d have had the whole thing cleared up by now. Well, and what’s your next step? You’d better bring young Barclay down here, caution him and get a statement.”

  Flecker looked at his watch. “I’ve an appointment with him for ten-thirty,” he said. “I’ve arranged to meet him at The Paddocks, ostensibly to check through his father’s guns. I thought I’d see what he had to say and decide on the next move then. It is possible that there is an innocent explanation and—”

  “Innocent, my foot!” interrupted Dobson explosively. “Don’t you believe it; he’s in it up to the neck. Well, you’d better get up there right away before he gets the wind up and tries to run for it and don’t you go believing his ‘innocent explanations’.”

  “Right you are, sir,” said Flecker, getting to his feet. “I may want a search party if the other gun isn’t immediately forthcoming; will that be possible?”

  “Oh yes, let us know, but if you play your cards properly, you’ll get all you want from Barclay. He’s got himself in a nasty mess—very nasty.”

  “You didn’t tell him much,” said Browning as they drove towards Winmore End, and there was a note of reproach in his voice.

  “No, to tell you the truth his steamroller tactics dishearten me,” Flecker answered. “He’s such a leaper to conclusions and the tentative idea is either squashed flat or elevated to undeserved importance. He’s not a man with whom you can talk things over. I’m going to hand out the minimum amount of fact to keep him happy and keep my ideas to myself.”

  The rain had stopped when they reached The Paddocks and Paul Barclay was waiting outside the house. He stood looking down on a patch of yellow and mauve crocuses, but his thoughts were elsewhere.

  “Good morning, sir,” said Flecker, ominously formal. “Shall we go in?”

  “Good morning. Yes, of course.” One look at the unfriendly expression on Flecker’s face told him that he was in trouble. Talking nervously and disjointedly about the weather and the price of hay he led the way into the house. “This used to be a storeroom of sorts,” he explained, fumbling with the gunroom key. “My father was very keen on safety precautions, always kept it locked.” He got the door opened at last and they went in. A long box held the Colonel’s fishing rods, a pair of waders drooped in a corner, a landing net, gaff and gamebags hung with a set of oilskins on the wall, dusty cartridge boxes were piled on a shelf and in a wooden rack were a number of guns.

  “Well,” Flecker looked enquiringly at Barclay, “what’s missing? No, don’t touch them,” he added, though, from a cursory glance, the spread of dust seemed even and he could see no sign of hair or bloodstains on any of the butts. “Just tell us what’s missing.”

  “Well, the air rifles are both there and the old fourteen-bore and father’s other twelve-bore; there are two missing,” he said, taking the plunge, “both twelve-bore double-barrelled shotguns.”

  “One we know is at the police station,” said Flecker. “Where’s the other one?”

  “I don’t know. It might have been sent to the gunsmith for some reason or other or it might be around somewhere.”

  “It isn’t at the gunsmith,” Flecker told him. “We’ve inquired, and if Colonel Barclay was so insistent about keeping the guns locked up it hardly seems likely that he would have left it lying around.”

  “No,” said Paul Barclay, his air of dejection increasing. “It doesn’t, does it?”

  “I imagine that one of the missing guns belongs to you,” said Flecker.

  “Yes, that’s right.”

  “And the Colonel had a pair and the one that killed him isn’t one of the pair so evidently it’s yours; correct?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you’ve no idea at all where the Colonel’s missing gun is?”

  “No.”

  Flecker looked at him thoughtfully. “Where did you last see your gun before you found it beside the Colonel’s body in the larch plantation?” he asked.

  Barclay grabbed at this chance to vindicate himself. “I left it in Well Cottage last Friday evening, I’m afraid. It was rank carelessness—”

  “Loaded?”

  “No, I unloaded; I leaned the gun against the window and left the cartridges on the sill. I only meant to leave it there for a few minutes and then I clean forgot it.”

  “What were you doing there?”

  “I was showing Mrs. Carlson round; she’s got to leave the Rectory flat and I thought the cottage might suit her.”

  “And why did you try to pass it off as your father’s gun when you found it beside him in the plantation?”

  “Well, I thought it was an accident. You see, it never entered my head that he had been murdered. I thought it would simplify matters if I let them think it was his gun and, you see, I thought he had collected it from Well Cottage; it wasn’t until afterwards that I found one of his own guns was missing. And then, when Inspector Sims came along investigating a murder it seemed too late to say anything. Besides, it was rank carelessness to leave it in the cottage; I can’t think what Father would have said.”

  “All right, that’s the gun. Now you’d better come clean about last Saturday night. According to your last statement you took an hour and a quarter to drive from Winmore End to Shepherd’s Hill and shut up the chickens. It sounds excessive to me; what were you doing?”

  “I wasn’t shooting my father,” said Barclay defensively.

  “Good, I’m glad to hear that, but I still want to know what you were doing.”

  “Well, if you must know, I was calling on Mrs. Carlson,” answered Barclay, looking more like an abject spaniel than ever.

  “You went straight to the Old Rectory from the Sinclairs?”

  “Yes.”

  “You drove there in the Land Rover?”

  “Yes, I parked it in the stable yard.”

  “How long did you stay there?”

  “Oh, about an hour. It was seven-fifteen when I left; I remember that because I suddenly realized the time and I fairly shot home—”

  “In fact, Mrs. Barclay is in the dark,” said Flecker. “All right, we’ll be discreet. Now, you’re sure you’ve no idea where the other gun is?”

  “Not the faintest,” answered Paul Barclay in tones of immense relief.

  “One other thing. May we have a look at your father’s writing desk? I want an envelope of the sort he normally used.”

  “Of course,” answered Barclay, and led the way to the drawing-room.

  Having seen the house and the gunroom locked, Flecker took both keys from Barclay, saying that he might want another look, and made for the police car at an unusually brisk pace.

  “What’s up?” asked Browning, getting the car in motion.

  “I want to get to the Old Rectory before he telephones Mrs. Carlson; that’s why I locked him out of the house.”

  “Do you think he did it?” asked Browning, when they were on the road.

  “He’s behaving very stupidly if he did.”

  “And if he didn’t. You let him off pretty lightly.”

  “Yes, I know. I ought to have given him a pi-jaw, but I couldn’t get into a brutal mood; it was too nice a day. Anyway,” he added, winding down the window, “we haven’t finished with him yet.”

  The Old Rectory was a Regency house. Dingy-white and L-shaped, it faced the road across a sweep of neglected lawn with a single magnificent cedar in the centre. The detectives approached from the side; they left the car in Church Lane and went in through the small, cobbled stable yard, for Lesley Carlson’s flat was at the rear of the house; a card over a bell beside the back door bore her name. Flecker’s ring evoked a thunder of footsteps
and in a moment the door was flung wide by a boy of about ten with yellow, tangled, tow-textured hair, wide-set blue eyes and a good-natured though worried face. “Oh,” he said, “I thought it was Gillian.” He turned and bawled, “Mummy,” in the direction of the back stairs.

  “Take a large wholemeal, darling,” a voice called back. Flecker grinned. “Look, you’d better run up and tell her that we’re police officers and would like to see her for a few moments,” he said.

  “Police! Oh lor,” said Anthony Carlson. “Have you come about the murders?”

  “That’s it,” answered Flecker.

  “Mummy,” bawled Anthony, proceeding as far as the bottom stair, “they’re policemen about the murders, shall I bring them up?” There was a moment’s hesitation and then the voice answered, “Yes.”

  The Rectory flat had been created by the simple expedient of blocking one passage with a large panel of hardboard and dividing one room into bathroom and kitchen, also with hardboard. But the sitting-room was a very pleasant place; there were flowered chintzes and books and a bowl of spring flowers and the two windows looked east to Church Field and beyond it to the woods. Except for a turned-up nose, Lesley Carlson wasn’t like her son; she had brown hair and eyes, a small, rather appealing face, an ugly forehead, partially concealed by tactful tendrils of hair, and a gentle mouth. She was dressed for summer in a deep pink skirt and a flowered blouse.

  Flecker said, “I’m sorry to bother you, Mrs. Carlson, but Mr. Paul Barclay tells us that he came to see you last Saturday and we wondered whether you could remember the time he came and the time he left?”

  Lesley Carlson turned to Anthony. “You’d better run across and hurry Gillian up,” she said; “we don’t want to be late.”

  “OK,” answered Anthony and departed with thunderous noise.

  “He’s taking far too much interest in these murders,” she explained to the detectives. “He and Gillian Willis talk of nothing else and they get hold of the most gory details. Won’t you sit down?” They sat and Browning remarked, “Kiddies of that age do seem to revel in blood and lurid details, don’t they, madam?”