Ten minutes brought him to the spot in the larch plantation where Colonel Barclay had died, and he stood there for a time, lost in thought. The larches had not yet grown tall enough to shade the track and so, at Flecker’s feet, primroses raised pale, naïve faces and flamboyant dandelions, the extroverts of the spring flowers, splashed their exuberant yellow among the grass. It was very quiet; Sunday had stilled the tractors, and Flecker collected the sounds one by one. Somewhere away on the hill a dog barked, there was the distant angry moo of a protesting cow, nearer two birds sang, and in the yellow flowers of a self-sown sallow beside the tracks, the bees droned ceaselessly. Man oughtn’t to do his dirty work in such places, thought Flecker, he should murder beside the railway line or behind the gasworks, but then he reminded himself that a week ago the woods had not looked like this and the track had been a cold, grim place.
He wrote the times various parts of his walk had taken on an envelope, unwilling to trust to his memory, and then, deciding that the day was too good to waste by returning to Crossley, he walked on along the track until at length he reached the lane Miller had spoken of, which ran between the villages of Birkett’s Heath and Redpole Green. Exploring, he found small farms, and cherry orchards white with blossom, and then, suddenly becoming aware of his lack of condition, he turned for home. He had regained the woods and was looking for the path which would bring him out on the Green at Winmore End, when he came face to face with Harris, who was strolling along the track, his coat, like Flecker’s slung over his shoulder while Nellie, the black and white bitch foraged among the trees.
Flecker said, “Good afternoon, what a lovely day.” And Harris, assuming a rather forced air of bonhomie, asked “Is it for business or pleasure that you’re walking through our woods?”
“A bit of both,” answered Flecker.
“There aren’t many sights to beat them when they’re first in leaf. Another week and they’ll be at their best, but then, of course, the anemones are over. Oh, it’s a pretty spot. I always say the best things don’t cost you anything. But nowadays people don’t see it like that, they don’t value anything unless they’ve paid through the nose for it. And do you see the children flowering nowadays? No, you don’t. Outside the post office, that’s where you’ll find them, stuffing ice cream lollies or indoors, watching the television. As for walking, they won’t take a step unless they’re forced to, but then what can you expect when they give them all these school ’buses . . .”
Flecker had stopped listening. No use questioning him now, no witness, he thought. I could take him down to the police station or get hold of young Random. He decided against both plans of action. After all, nothing would be gained by haste. Tomorrow would do, for Harris had no inkling of how his mind was working. He began to explain that he was looking for the path to Winmore End and Harris, pathetically pleased to be of service, insisted on turning back and leading him to it. When he was alone again, Flecker walked briskly, ignoring the beauties of nature now that his mind had been thrust so abruptly back to the case.
On reaching the car, he drove at once to the post office and tried to telephone Browning, but there was no reply from his house. Back at The Swan, he tried five times that evening, at carefully spaced intervals, and it wasn’t until the fifth try that Browning answered.
“Order, counter order, disorder,” Flecker told him. “Wash out visiting the agency, I’ll get someone else put on it. I want you down here tomorrow as soon as you can get. I met our gardening friend in the woods this afternoon and he was carrying a pebble tweed coat.”
Chapter Nine
The train was late, but Flecker waited contentedly in the station yard. He observed the thin trickle of travellers. The tense, harassed faces of the hurriers, the pessimists who took their mackintoshes despite a cloudless sky; the unsmiling faces of the bowler-hatted city types, living for the moment when they could forget their early morning frustration in The Times. What a mess we’ve made of life, he thought, surely it was never intended to be like this?
Then Browning appeared and at least he looked cheerful. “So things are moving, are they?” he asked, as he stowed his suitcase in the back of the car. “I wouldn’t have thought it of him, you know, not really,” he went on as he settled himself in front. “It’s one up to the local chap—Sims—he had his eye on Harris from the first.”
“No leaping to conclusions,” said Flecker, negotiating the perilous turn into the market place. “And no professional jealousy, please. I asked Random where I would find Harris on a Monday,” he went on as they waited at the traffic lights. “Apparently he works for a Mr. Trent down the lane beside the post office.”
“Did you get someone put on the agency job?” asked Browning, as Flecker let the car out along the dual carriageway.
“Aye. I told old Hodgeson that it was of the utmost urgency. I thought otherwise I wouldn’t hear anything for a week.”
“Hardly seems necessary now,” observed Browning.
“Oh, and the big noise wants to see us at three, curse him!”
“The Chief Constable.”
“Aye, himself.”
“Now, where’s Sunnybank,” asked Flecker, when they emerged from the cool gloom of the road through the woods and found themselves in Winmore End. Turning down the lane beside the post office, they saw it at once, a recently erected cottage built in a yellowish, rough-hewn stone; it had dormer windows with heavily leaded panes, a front door of studded oak, and what appeared to be Jacobean chimneys. But the garden was the showpiece; rockeries, lily ponds, sundials, rustic seats and stone owls were squashed together in a pocket-handkerchief-size square. There seemed to be no room for Harris, much less need of his labour.
“There’s some more at the back,” called Browning, who’d walked on down the lane while Flecker stood gazing at the front garden. Flecker followed him and found a strip of field fenced from the lane by link wire; in it Harris was digging. Nellie lay close at hand on a sack, but there was no sign of the pebble tweed coat, in fact a brown one hung from a post lower down the fence.
“Mr. Harris,” Flecker called over the fence, for there was no gate to be seen, “could you spare us a minute?”
Harris looked up and then took his time about coming. Deliberately he dug in his fork and wiped his hands on his corduroy trousers. “You’ll get me into trouble,” he said, “always coming round when I’m at work. Couldn’t it have waited until this evening?”
“No, I’m sorry,” Flecker answered, “it’s important. We want to know how you were dressed when you went for your walk the Saturday before last—the day when Colonel Barclay was murdered.”
“Dressed?” Harris looked both surprised and apprehensive. “What’s that got to do with Colonel Barclay?”
“Very probably nothing,” answered Flecker; “but we still want to know.”
“Well, I wasn’t dressed up; not for walking through the woods, there’s no sense in it. I have got a Sunday suit, but I don’t know how many years it is since I wore it. Nowadays people seem to prefer to spend a fortune on their backs, you should see the girls in the village here of a Saturday night—high heels and all it’s no wonder they can’t walk.”
“Were you wearing an overcoat?” asked Flecker patiently.
“No, I don’t like the things and if you keep on the move you don’t need them. No, I put on my old mackintosh, it looked as though it might rain, but in the end it never did more than threaten, and I wore my old felt hat and a good stout pair of boots. That’s another thing that’s not what it was; the shoes nowadays! Cardboard, that’s what they’re made of. And the price of them—” He paused for breath and Flecker interrupted quickly. “Last night when I met you, you were carrying a greyish tweed jacket. Were you wearing that on the night Colonel Barclay died?”
“No, that I wasn’t; I can answer that for certain, because I didn’t have it then.”
“Oh, it’s new, is it?”
“You give me half a minute and I’ll tell you how I
came by it,” said Harris testily. “It was last Wednesday. Now, I don’t work on Wednesdays as a rule; well, I haven’t a regular job, sometimes I help someone out, but generally I walk down to Crossley and do my shopping. Well, that was what I did last Wednesday morning and then, in the afternoon, they were having a jumble sale in the pavilion and I thought I might as well have a look round and it happened that I came across this coat. Five shillings they were asking and nothing was wrong with it, so I took it. I thought it would do for work and my old brown one won’t go on much longer.”
“Who sold it to you?” asked Flecker.
“It was Mrs. Dawson—lives on the Green—who was selling the clothes. She talked me into buying it, really. ‘Try it on, Mr. Harris,’ she kept on at me and when I did she said it fitted me a treat.”
“Good. Well, you’ve been a great help, Mr. Harris. It’s possible that we may want a signed statement from you, but if we do we’ll call round in the evening. We might need the coat if it turns out to be the one we’re interested in, so don’t lose it or chuck it away.”
Harris was still standing at the fence with a puzzled expression on his face when the detectives climbed into the car. Browning took the wheel and reversed up the lane and into the post office yard to turn. “Mrs. Dawson on the Green,” said Flecker thoughtfully. “Oh yes, she appears in Sims’ notes. She was one of the witnesses to the fact that Paul Barclay didn’t leave the Sinclairs until six-ten; or rather, that his Land Rover stood outside till then.”
Mrs. Dawson was at home and her large foolish face brightened at the excitement of a visit from the police. “Well, fancy,” she said, smoothing back wisps of reddish grey hair which had escaped from her bun, “and I expect you’ll be wanting to know how I saw Mr. Paul’s army truck stand outside, like the other gentleman who called. Not a very sociable sort, he wasn’t, always in a hurry. ‘What’s this, what’s that?’ and he was gone. Poor Mrs. Sinclair was very upset the way he wouldn’t look for Hilda, but of course, as it turned out, there was no hurry.”
Flecker said, “We really came to ask you about the jumble sale; I believe you were in charge of the clothes stall?”
“Yes, Mrs. Willis asked me and I said I’d do it for her. Some of the ladies don’t like the clothes stall—second-hand, you see. There’s always plenty after the fancywork stall and they don’t mind selling the cakes or the produce, but no one wants the clothes; well, I’m not one to bother—they’re all perfectly clean. That was what Mrs. Willis called round about that Saturday night, just to make sure it was all right for me. She said she’d got no end of stuff. And so she had, we had a very good sale, but I haven’t heard what we made yet.”
“Do you remember selling a coat to Mr. Harris?” asked Flecker.
“Why yes, certainly I do. He was the only gentleman there, you see, apart from the Rector and Mr. Trent and one or two others who wouldn’t be wanting a secondhand coat, so I made up my mind I’d better sell it to him and it did fit him a treat.”
“What colour was it?”
“A sort of blacky grey colour with white flecks, not the sort to show the dirt, as I told Mr. Harris.”
“Do you know who sent the coat to the sale?”
“Well no, I don’t. I didn’t have anything to do with the collecting, Mrs. Willis saw to all that. I was going to help her, but then Timmy, my poor old cat, was taken ill. Twelve years old, that’s a good age for a cat. He wouldn’t eat, you see, not fish, nor steak or even liver.
“Mrs. Willis phoned up the vet. for me. Mr. Fairfax was away, but the young protem came and he said, ‘It’s inside, Mrs. Dawson’ that’s what he said, and he gave me some pills. But it wasn’t a bit of use. Poor old Tim, he just put his head between his paws and passed away.”
Flecker said, “Oh dear, you must miss him after all those years.” And then he went on hastily, “But by the Saturday evening he had died, so you knew you could help with the jumble sale?”
“That’s right. Mrs. Willis called round to see how I was placed and I was standing out here telling her about poor Tim passing away and that was how I came to know the army truck was there. Mrs. Willis doesn’t keep a pet, but she always had a kind word for poor old Tim. You couldn’t say the same for Gillian though; she hadn’t got no time for Tim, it’s all ponies with her. But with Anthony—that’s Mrs. Carlson’s boy—it was always ‘Hullo, Tim,’ if he saw him out there on the wall, and he’d stroke him, and I called out to Mrs. Carlson when I saw her cutting across the Green, ‘Timmy’s gone,’ I said, ‘will you tell Anthony?’ But she was in a hurry and she didn’t seem to hear me and I took poor old Tim down the back garden and buried him. Now that poor Miss Schmidt what was murdered, she was very fond of cats, but didn’t care for dogs. Funny, isn’t it? Now I’m fond of all animals—”
Flecker was slowly backing his way down the garden path; he said, “Well, we must go and catch Mrs. Willis before she goes shopping.” He looked at his watch. “Bother,” he said, winding guiltily. “Do you know the right time?”
“The ’bus hasn’t long gone by, about five or ten minutes ago. It would be about twenty to twelve, I expect.”
“Well, thank you very much, Mrs. Dawson, you’ve been a great help,” said Flecker, opening the gate.
“You’re welcome,” she called after him.
*
The detectives found Joan Willis hanging curtains. Her assistant, a resentful-looking Gillian, seized the opportunity offered by their arrival and made off at speed.
Flecker said, “I wanted to ask you about the jumble sale, Mrs. Willis.”
Joan Willis let the faded green curtains slide from the rod. “It’s all right,” she told Browning, who put up a hand to stop them, “they’ve got to come down, they’re miles too short.”
“Moving’s a very expensive business,” remarked Browning. “Mrs. Browning and I had to move several times when we were first married and a terrible expense it was; nothing ever seemed to fit.”
“You’re telling me,” said Joan Willis, descending from the step-ladder. “Now what’s all this about the jumble sale?”
“I believe you collected the wherewithal,” said Flecker.
“Most of it. As usual everyone said they’d help but when the time came they all dropped out. I collected no end of stuff round the village, but the people with cars mostly brought their own stuff over and dumped it here.”
“Did you keep it here until the sale?” asked Flecker.
“No, I didn’t, that would have been too much of a good thing. You can see for yourself the mess we’re in without giving up space to piles of wretched jumble. No, I dumped it over the Old Rectory stable. I’ve always used it for that sort of thing and I intend to go on using it until they sell the house.”
“It’s the clothes I’m particularly interested in,” Flecker told her.
“Oh well, you ought to see old Mother Dawson then. She was in charge of the clothes stall, but mind you don’t get the history of that wretched old cat.”
“We’ve seen her. We’re working backwards; we know who bought the coat, but not who sent it in. It’s a dark grey tweed sports coat with white flecks.”
“Well, now you are asking. Who on earth sent in clothes? Men’s clothes? We always have no end of kids’ clothes—outgrown stuff—they sell like hot cakes, but there’s not much of a demand for anything else and what gets left I have to pack up and send to the refugees; it’s a bit of a bind. Now let me think. The Trents sent in a few things. What sort of sized man would the coat fit?”
“About my size and nearly as shapeless,” answered Flecker.
“It wouldn’t be the Trents then; Eric’s a little squirt of a man. Dr. Felton’s tall and thin—oh, I believe it was the Barclays. Wait a minute, I’m not sure, but I think it was them. Jean brought over a load of stuff one day when I was out; I think there was a coat in that lot.”
“Can you remember which day it was?” asked Flecker.
“No.” Joan thought for a moment. “No, I’m sor
ry, I haven’t a clue. You can imagine what it’s been like here with moving and everything; I haven’t known whether I was on my head or my heels.”
“You were out the day Mrs. Barclay came, you’ve remembered that much.”
Joan Willis laughed. “Every time I’ve gone out for the last fortnight I’ve come back to find a pile of jumble in the porch. I’ve been nearly off my head with the stuff.”
“Well, if you do happen to remember, perhaps you’ll let us know?” asked Fletcher. “Inspector Miller will pass on any messages.”
“Righty-ho,” said Joan Willis.
“Stones Farm, I suppose?” asked Browning, for Flecker sat in the car gazing at a handful of envelopes in preoccupied silence.
“Mmm,” he agreed absent-mindedly and, as Browning drove in the direction of Shepherd’s Hill, he produced a pencil and began to add new knowledge here and there in an indecipherable squiggle.
“Of course you never did fancy Harris, did you?” asked Browning. “It’s a pity about young Barclay. I’m sorry for his wife and the old lady, it’ll be a shock to her, you know. Old Dobson’ll be cock-a-hoop, he was sure it was Barclay.”
“When he wasn’t sure that it was Hilda Schmidt’s boy friend,” said Flecker dryly, as he stowed his envelopes away in his pocket. “We shall see.”
They found Paul Barclay in the farmyard taking delivery of a consignment of galvanized water troughs. When he caught sight of the detectives leaning on the gate he signed the delivery note and came across to them. “You wouldn’t think it,” he said, “but those troughs cost a small fortune and then there’s the water to be piped. But if you’re going to run beef cattle you’ve got to have water and there it is. Well, what can I do for you, Chief Inspector?”
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