Flecker said, “Since our presence is a perpetual reminder of ‘Man’s inhumanity to man’ we’d better buck up and get off the premises. Last Saturday, Mrs. Carlson?”
“Yes, let me think. He came soon after six, about ten or a quarter past, I think.”
“And he left?”
“Oh, soon after seven; he’d stayed later than he meant to and he went off in rather a rush.”
“I believe you looked round Well Cottage with Mr. Barclay. Last Friday, wasn’t it? A week ago today?”
“Yes, I did. You see the Church Commissioners, I think that’s what they’re called, are selling this house and it doesn’t seem very likely that the new owners would want us. Anyway, it probably wouldn’t work living cheek by jowl like this with anyone else; the Willises were very easy-going. Anyway, the point is that Paul—Mr. Barclay—thought that Well Cottage might do for us and so he showed me round.”
“Do you remember if he was carrying a gun?”
Lesley thought. “Yes, do you know I believe he was,” and then, suddenly realizing what this might imply, she turned pink and put her hand up to her mouth. Flecker grinned at her. “Don’t worry,” he said. “We know he was. Mr. Barclay told us so himself. The next point is, did he still have it when he left?”
Lesley Carlson screwed up her face as she tried to recollect the scene. “I’m not certain,” she answered, “but I don’t think he had. I remember that he had a struggle with the door, the latch wasn’t working properly, and I don’t remember seeing the gun then.”
“Did you come home together?”
“No, Mr. Barclay was walking and I had my little car; I was on my way to collect Anthony, who’d been out to tea.”
Flecker pushed back his hair and looked at her earnestly. “It seems to me an extraordinary careless act to leave a gun and cartridges lying about in an unlocked uninhabited cottage; would you feel that there were mitigating circumstances? That he might have been in such a disturbed state of mind as to warrant such extreme absent-mindedness?”
Lesley Carlson turned pink again. “Yes,” she answered simply, “I think there were.”
“Well, thank you very much,” said Flecker briskly. He got up and looked at the view from the windows. “There’s the much disputed field,” he said. “Were Mr. and Mrs. Willis very much upset by the Colonel’s threat to plough?”
“Joan Willis wasn’t, she likes a scrap and she rushed round organizing resistance. She’d persuaded dozens of people to sign her petition by Saturday night; she’s got such a lot of energy that I think she was positively enjoying herself. But the poor Rector, he likes a quiet life, I think he was very miserable about it all.”
“Here they come,” announced Browning, as thunderous footsteps sounded on the stairs.
“We’ll be off,” said Flecker hastily. “Goodbye.”
“We’ll leave the car where it is,” he went on when they were outside, “and go and see if the elusive Mr. Willis is at home. He’s probably seeing the sexton about Miss Schmidt’s funeral now.” He looked back at the Old Rectory; a blackbird was singing among the sticky brown buds of the chestnut tree, the forsythia on the east wall made a cascade of canary yellow, overhead fat fleecy clouds sailed majestically across the tentative blue of the spring sky. He began to whistle softly between his teeth.
Browning said, “Well, I don’t know who to believe; if you ask me they’re none of them speaking the truth.”
“‘Beauty is truth, truth is beauty; that is all you know, and all on earth you need to know’,” declaimed Flecker. “I wish it were enough to content our friend Dobson and the AC.”
Browning looked disapproving and Flecker said, “All right, it’s only the spring; even in the hardened arteries of chief inspectors the blood flows a little faster. You’d feel better if you took that overcoat off,” he added as an after-thought.
The Reverend Frank Willis was in his garden. His long willowy figure was bent over a recumbent bicycle at one of whose tyres he pumped ineffectually. He looked up when Flecker said, “Good morning,” disclosing a face ravaged and lined out of all proportion to his forty years. Flecker explained that they were police officers, while Browning inspected the faulty tyre. “It’s the valve,” he announced. “Pumping’s a waste of time, have you got a spare valve rubber? It wouldn’t take me a minute to put it right.”
“Oy, I want some notes taken,” objected Flecker.
“No, no, no, I wouldn’t dream of letting you,” said the Rector. “I expect my wife or Gillian will understand it, I’ll ask them. Now, how can I help you, Inspector?”
“Well, first of all a purely routine question: how did you spend last Saturday evening?”
“Rather stupidly, I’m afraid,” answered Willis, as an involuntary twitch convulsed one side of his face. “I made a silly mistake.” He smiled thinly, exposing crooked teeth. “I mistook the day of a meeting; I was under the impression that it was last Saturday, but when I reached Crossley I found that I was a week too soon; it takes place tomorrow.”
“What sort of a meeting?” asked Flecker.
“The spring meeting of the ruri-decanal conference; it was to be held at six-thirty in the church room.”
“Did you see anyone while you were there?”
“No, no indeed. I found the room locked up and on studying the little list outside in the porch I realized my mistake.”
“And you turned for home?”
“No, not immediately. First I went into St. Mary’s. It’s a very beautiful church; I believe it was restored in the seventeenth century, but there are still some very much older parts and a fourteenth-century tomb of particular interest. It’s well worth a visit.”
“We haven’t had time to look at yours, yet,” said Flecker. “Was there anyone else in St. Mary’s?”
“No, it was quite deserted. I spent a little time there and then I climbed on my faithless friend here and pedalled home.”
“And what time did you reach home?”
“About seven-thirty, I think; I know my wife was surprised to see me so early.”
“But surely if you left Crossley soon after six-thirty an hour was a very long time to take; it’s only four miles.”
“I don’t know what time I left Crossley.” A series of twitches took control of Willis’s face, he put up a hand to still them. “I don’t know what time I left St. Mary’s and then it’s uphill nearly all the way and that night the wind was against me. I walked a good deal of the way and I wasn’t hurrying—there was no reason to hurry—I wasn’t expected back.”
“Yes, of course, that’s true,” Flecker said soothingly. “Do you often make mistakes like that?”
“Well, yes, I must admit to being stupid about practical matters. My ‘better half’,” he laughed uneasily, “is the practical one but, on this occasion, she slipped too. It was the move from the Old Rectory that disorganized us. The notice of the meeting was mislaid, so we relied on our memories and they failed us.”
“Now what about the feeling in the village over Colonel Barclay’s decision to plough Church Field; were people very indignant?”
“Yes, they were and naturally so. Perhaps he had a legal right to take back the field, but he was breaking a gentleman’s agreement and he knew it.” Willis twitched and shook as he recalled Barclay’s iniquities.
“Do you think there was any particular reason for this sudden, rather spiteful behaviour?” asked Flecker.
“I don’t know. I had no quarrel with him. I believe he objected to what he called my high church practices, but he had never been a regular communicant—just Christmas and Easter, and then of course he came with the British Legion on Armistice Sunday. No, he said he could no longer afford to let us have the field, but when we offered him rent he turned it down at once, without a moment’s thought. I don’t believe that money came into it.”
“Did you know Miss Schmidt at all?”
“Only to say good morning to; she was a Roman Catholic—lapsed, I think.”
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“Oh, dear, oh dear,” said Browning, as he and Flecker shut the door in the new Rectory wall behind them and walked back to the car. “Why ever couldn’t some of them have been sitting quietly round the television with their families?”
“I don’t suppose he can afford television,” answered Flecker. “I wonder if there was an east wind last Saturday night.”
“There was up our way. I remember Mrs. Browning remarking that March had gone out like a lion. And you know I wouldn’t put it past him to go to a meeting on the wrong night; there he was pumping away at that bicycle and never thought to look at the valve.”
Flecker looked at his watch. “It’s after one; shall we try for bread and cheese and a pint at the Carpenters’ Arms?” he asked.
“Right you are,” Browning agreed.
It was cold in the bar and they took their lunch outside to a rickety bench and table on the sunny side of the pub. The view of the wire-fenced, concrete-pathed and washing-haunted gardens of the council cottages was depressing but the sun was warm and aconites had flowered along the bank. Flecker ate mainly in preoccupied silence, while Browning amused himself and a small black mongrel, who answered enthusiastically to the name of Nigger and had a beach-dog passion for retrieving sticks.
As Flecker put down his empty beer mug he returned to life. “What we want is that gun,” he announced. “I daresay it won’t yield much itself, but where we find it may tell us something. I don’t suppose Bretford will want to lay on a search party until Monday, but we could have a scout round on our own.” He looked at his watch. “Do you suppose Paul Barclay will go to Miss Schmidt’s funeral?”
“Shouldn’t think so; not if he’s got any sense, but you never know, sometimes they don’t seem able to stay away.”
“Well, come on,” said Flecker, collecting up the plates and mugs. “We’ll find him and apply for permission to search.”
At Stones Farm they found only Mary Barclay. She was sitting on a seat outside the dining-room window, a pair of tortoiseshell spectacles on the end of her nose and a pile of mending beside her. “They are neither of them at home,” she told Flecker. “My son is doing what he calls ‘reorganizing things’ and his wife has gone to put up jumps for some riding-club affair.” She managed to make both occupations sound futile.
“They’ve left you to hold the fort and do the darning, have they?” asked Flecker.
“Well, somebody ought to do it. I can’t stand the way young people live nowadays, they’re always in a muddle and a rush; nothing’s ever done until the last minute. My daughter-in-law’s no exception, always rushing here, there and everywhere and leaving everything half-finished.”
“It’s a sign of the times,” said Flecker. “The individual has become such a small and impotent unit that the untidiness of people’s private lives doesn’t seem to matter. Once you see yourself as one insect the more you’re lost, by the old standards anyway.”
“I don’t know,” said Mary Barclay, weaving her needle deftly through the grey darn. “I think that the old standards, as you call them, had a lot to be said for them; at least we knew where we were. We knew right from wrong and if we wanted to go to the devil we did it with our eyes open. Now they just drift there.”
Flecker stood looking at her contemplatively, wondering what she was really like and whether the proud façade and repelling asperity were a protective shell for a shattered self-confidence. Old Barclay’s blatant unfaithfulness must have affected deeply a woman of her pride and apparent moral code. Still, shutting things away helped no one; he pushed ineffectively at his forelock. “Did you know that Colonel Barclay and Miss Schmidt were having an affair?” he asked. Mary Barclay withdrew into herself with no outward sign but the sudden immobility of her needle. “Yes,” she answered, “but I should prefer not to talk about it.”
“I understand,” said Flecker, “but you needn’t worry about us. We’re used to that sort of thing—we meet so much of it in our job. But the question I was leading up to is whether the five pounds in the envelope in your husband’s wallet could have been intended for Miss Schmidt?”
“I don’t know; I’ve no idea.” There was a high, frightened note in Mary Barclay’s voice and she began to gather her sewing things round her as though to barricade herself from Flecker’s probing.
“All right, we won’t pursue that point. Where do you think I shall find your son?”
“I expect he’ll be about the buildings at Home Farm; that’s where he said he was going. What do you want to see him about?”
“We want permission to search for the gun your husband was carrying when he left The Paddocks; the one found beside his body wasn’t his, it belongs to your son.”
“Paul’s gun beside his father’s body? Nonsense!” said Mary Barclay stoutly.
“I’m afraid it’s not nonsense,” Flecker told her quietly. “Your son has admitted that it’s his.”
“He’s simply dramatizing himself then,” cried Mary Barclay desperately. “Just because he quarrelled with his father over the cricket field he’s got it into his head that you suspect him of murder, but that’s ridiculous; it’s far more likely that my husband was killed by someone he caught poaching than by his own son.”
“It isn’t, you know,” Flecker told her gently. “Why should a poacher have killed Miss Schmidt and how would he have known that there was a shotgun and cartridges at Well Cottage?”
“I don’t know; I’m not a detective; I can’t work out that sort of thing. All I know is that Paul wouldn’t have killed his father, he’s not that sort of person; he doesn’t rebel, he just puts up with things or pretends to and finds a way round them.”
“I see.” Flecker looked at her thoughtfully. “Well, we’ll go and see how he’s getting on with his reorganization. Thank you for your help.”
The detectives drove back towards Winmore End and down Clint’s Lane to the Home Farm buildings, where they found Paul Barclay in earnest consultation with Hernes, his father’s cowman, and Ken Mullins. He broke off when he saw the detectives and came across to them. “Are you looking for me?” he asked nervously.
“Yes, we want to find this missing gun. It seems most likely that it would be hidden somewhere in the woods or fields near Well Cottage. I thought Sergeant Browning and I would have a poke round the most likely places this afternoon and if we don’t have any luck there’ll have to be a full-scale search with police from Bretford. Have you any objection to our wandering about?”
“No, none at all, so long as you shut the gates,” answered Barclay; “but I don’t know where you’ll find it; I mean, a gun’s not a very easy thing to hide.”
“Ponds, pits, rabbit warrens, undergrowth—” said Flecker with a grin, and then broke off abruptly as a voice at his elbow asked “Excuse me, sir, but did you say you were looking for a gun?”
“I did.”
“I thought that was what I ’eard you say.” Ken Mullins pushed his cap further back on his head and turned to Barclay. “It slipped my mind altogether,” he said. “It was that Monday afternoon and we were all at sixes and sevens, couldn’t seem to get on some’ow. And then Charlie came over from Stones with the Land Rover and said ’e’d got to take the potatoes down to Coopers; they’d been promised for Monday morning and they wanted them urgent. Well, when we opened up the back of the Land Rover we found there was no end of stuff in there, picnic baskets and mackintoshes and buckets and ’orse feed and bits of ’arness—all the lot. ‘Can’t put ’alf a ton of potatoes on top of this lot,’ I says to Charlie, so we set to and cleared it all out and that was ’ow we came across the gun.”
“It was in the back of the Land Rover?” asked Barclay in unbelieving tones.
“That’s it, all jumbled up with the rest. Well, we put all we could in the front, but when it came to the gun and the bucket, there weren’t no more room, so I said to Charlie I’d put ’em away safe somewhere and give them to Mr. Paul next time ’e came up and then it went right out of my ’ead;
never thought of it again until I ’eard you mention a gun just now and there it is stood up in the corner of the feedstore, round be’ind the Silcocks.”
“Good,” said Flecker. “Well, let’s have a look at it.”
“’Course by rights I should ’ave told Mr. Paul about it when he came over on the Tuesday,” explained Mullins as he led the way to the feed-store, a lean-to building off the barn, “but some’ow the Colonel being dead put it right out of my ’ead. Ah, ’e’s still there.”
“Don’t touch it,” Flecker told him; “the fewer prints the better.” He knelt down beside the gun and gazed intently at the butt. “It’s the one,” he said. “Browning, you’d better come and have a look.” When Browning had agreed with a grave nod that to him too, the butt appeared to bear traces of bloodstains, the detectives carried the gun to the car and there, in front of an enraptured Hernes and Mullins and a very grey-looking Paul Barclay, they carefully scraped off a little of the dried blood, removed with tweezers a hair and a tiny shred of tweed adhering to the trigger mechanism and packed these finds in small polythene boxes.
“Now,” said Flecker, turning to Barclay, “can you spare us Mr.—er—the chap who found the gun?”
“Mullins is the name,” interposed Mullins hastily. “Ken Mullins.”
“Well, we’d like to take you down to the police station, Mr. Mullins, and get you to sign a statement of how you found the gun and we shall want to take your fingerprints because, of course, you’ll have left them on the gun.”
“That’s all right by me,” Barclay answered dismally. “Hernes and I can sort things out here. You don’t think,” he blurted out suddenly, and then changed his mind. “Nothing really,” he muttered.
Flecker said, “I don’t suppose I shall know what to think until I get a report from the lab and probably that won’t be until Monday. Would you like to make a statement too, Mr. Barclay?”
Barclay looked up, but found himself unable to meet Flecker’s level gaze. “What can I say,” he mumbled, “except that I didn’t put it there and didn’t know it was there, and who’s going to believe that?”
They Died in the Spring Page 10