“Tha’ll ’ave to wait, Joe lad. You can’t disturb ’im at present. Enoch Sykes must ’ave bin restin’ on yon moor for twenty years, or more. He can bide another half hour or so, till Mr. Haworth’s at least finished “The Trumpet Shall Sound.” Then ah’ll hand him a note.”
“Now, look ’ere, George…”
“If tha want’s ’im before, tha’ll ’ave to go and fetch ’im off th’ platform, then,” said the caretaker, his little pointed chin jutting with determination.
P.C. Shuttleworth hesitated. His boots creaked badly. He was a shy and self-conscious, though diligent, officer who came in for a lot of chaff locally on account of his habit of blushing on the slightest provocation. The thought of noisily running the gauntlet of the congregation assembled behind the closed door filled him with such terror that he broke into a cold sweat and his knees knocked together. He, who would without hesitation wade into a public brawl, knock out its toughest participants with relish and haul them singly or in a party to the lock-up, paused in dread at the task before him. Among the sopranos now shouting in chorus inside, was a certain lady whom he one day hoped to make Mrs. Shuttleworth when he could pluck up the courage to broach the proposition.
“All right, George. But I’ll get into a row with Inspector Ross for this.”
“Tha’ll get into a worse bother if tha interrupts the Super. So tha met as well choose th’ less of two evils, Joe. By the way, Enoch Sykes’s mother’s in th’ church, too. We’d better tell ’er as well when th’ time comes.”
Woodroff opened the vestibule door again and there, in the dark, the two sat side by side waiting for their cue. Now and then, they forgot everything as the music ran its course. Applause at the end of the solo parts was not considered proper in the church, but an atmosphere of unbounded approval seemed to float into the anteroom and enfold the two on their vigil as Haworth sat down after a spirited rendering of “Why Do the Nations.” Their throats grew dry as the lovely strains of “I Know That My Redeemer Liveth” wafted gently to them and encompassed them with sad memories. The choir rose and chanted the eerie opening chords of the following chorus, “Since By Man Came Death” in an awful, incoherent pianissimo and the two men, remembering the purpose of the constable’s visit there, felt the hair rise in the napes of their necks.
Littlejohn, almost roasted in the hot atmosphere, was enjoying himself immensely and now and then he and his wife exchanged delighted glances. A spirit of ecstatic goodwill filled the place. Glowing, homely faces met his gaze wherever he looked. The weariness of everyday things fell from the countenances of the poor and overworked; the harassed grew calm; the stiffnecked and starchy seemed to relax and shed their pride; and the humble held up their heads. A cornet-player scrambled from the orchestra and self-consciously established himself at Haworth’s side. They were an ill-assorted pair: the singer, spruce, well set-up and aglow with energy; the instrumentalist, small, bow-legged and pale. The orchestra played the opening bars of “The Trumpet Shall Sound,” and the couple got into their stride. The cornet, second-best for the silver trumpet of full-dress performances, spoke with precision and the little man blowing it was transformed. Not one out of place, not a second behind-hand, the notes came forth like bubbles of iridescent sound and seemed to burst over the heads of the congregation. It was with difficulty at the end of the solo, that the audience refrained from bursting into delighted clapping.
Just as the choir was preparing to rise for a further outburst, little George Woodroff walked down the aisle with determination, his boots squeaking and tapping on the parquet floor. First, he went to a shrivelled, weary-looking, elderly woman dressed in black who was sitting in a side-pew parallel to the main aisle. He whispered in her ear and she, glancing nervously at him and then at the door, rose and awkwardly made her exit to receive the awful news from P.C. Shuttleworth. Woodroff continued his way to the platform, gestured to Haworth and handed him the note. The Superintendent, rather astonished, opened and glanced at it. He spoke to the tenor at his elbow and then hurriedly descended from his perch. He deliberately chose the aisle beside which Littlejohn was sitting at the end of a pew and, as he passed his friend, he touched him on the arm and signalled him to follow. The congregation whispered, looked anxiously curious and seemed about to rise and accompany them. Then, the choir broke forth and the commotion was stilled. The burst of “Worthy is the Lamb” followed the detectives far down the main street.
“Here’s a pretty kettle of fish, Littlejohn,” said Haworth as they strode along in the crisp night. “I thought you’d perhaps like to be in at this. Of course, you’re on holiday, but, if you’re like me, you’ll be challenged by this business that’s just cropped up.”
“I’m with you, Haworth. If I can help, count on me.”
“Well, this note says that the body of Enoch Sykes has been dug-up on Milestone Moor. That’s a corker for the police and no mistake! We’ll be at the police-station in five minutes, but I’ll just outline the story briefly. It refers to a murder committed in 1917, during the last war!”
“Good heavens! Talk about shades of the past.”
“Yes. In October, 1917, Jeremy Trickett, a local ironworker and, incidentally, a poacher as well, was found murdered on Milestone Moor, the lonely spot we passed through last night and which you can see stretching right to the skyline from the front bedroom of the house where you’re staying. There had been bad blood between him and Enoch Sykes, also an iron worker and poacher, about a girl and when Sykes couldn’t be found after the murder, which had been committed with a shotgun, naturally, the thoughts of the police turned to him. I was a constable in Huddersfield at the time, so I had nothing to do with it, but it was the talk of the countryside for months. You see, Sykes was never found. The theory was that he’d either got abroad, in spite of the difficulties due to war, or else managed to enlist and been killed. After a search throughout the length and breadth of the country, the case just had to be put in the unsolved files. This afternoon, the Home Guard were on manœuvres on the moor and, digging a trench, unearthed a human skeleton, which they’d the sense to leave as it was when they found what they’d turned-up. But not before they’d found a ring with Sykes’s initials on the hand of the skeleton. So there we are. Sykes must have been there some time and it looks as though somebody committed a double killing to throw the police off the scent. A cunning trick, eh?”
“If your surmise is right, the murderer was cold-blooded and unscrupulous and sheer accident has laid bare his scheme years after the event.”
“Yes. Twenty-three years is a long time and a lot of water’s gone under the bridge since 1917. The murderer might be dead or have disappeared.”
“So the case re-opens?”
“Yes. With a trail as cold as mutton. Still, there it is and we’ve got to start all over again and do our best, digging in the dead past. Something quite fresh in my experience.”
“And in mine, Haworth. I’m in this with you all the way, if you’ll have me, unofficially, of course.”
“Nay. You’re not getting away with that, Littlejohn. If this isn’t solved before the end of your holiday, I’m seeing the Chief Constable and we’re asking Scotland Yard for a man, with a suggested name to accompany the application. Then, perhaps we’ll have you with us for a bit longer.”
“Good!” said Littlejohn and the pair of them turned into the dimly-lighted entrance of the police headquarters.
The parish church clock struck nine. In the distance a brass band, with bombardon and bass trombone rampaging deeply, stumbled through its final rendering of “Beautiful Zion” before refreshing itself on the proceeds of its day’s efforts at its favourite taproom.
Chapter III
Milestone Moor
O, the famous Duke of York,
he had ten thousand men,
He marched them up yon hill,
and he marched them down again.
—Old Song
On the morning following the discovery of the crime of more than two decades since, Haworth and Littlejohn eased their large bodies into the police-car and as the church-clock struck ten, started on their uphill journey to Milestone Moor. The day was crisp and clear and early sunshine brightened the streets of the town and shone cheerfully on the surrounding countryside. The cobbled thoroughfares and stone buildings of Hatterworth were soon left behind and the car cruised easily upwards along the well-surfaced moorland road. A great, quiet wilderness soon spread all around the travellers. Whin and heather, their knotted, clinging roots showing in the peaty soil, swayed like the waves of a brown sea as the keen wind teased them hither and thither. A verge of fine turf, punctuated by white stones with black caps to mark the road in the dark or through the snows, stretched on either side of the route. Huge white clouds, sailing majestically, floated across the blue wintry sky.
The view was superb. On one hand, the moor, unbounded, reaching right to the horizon, decked in the browns and reds of winter. Pools of water, covered with thin skimmings of ice, dotted the wasteland. Moorland brooks rattled to join a stream which gurgled beneath a frozen film along the side of the road. On the other hand, a steep slope of mossy turf, gradually changing into grassland where man had set about and conquered it. The valley beneath, with Hatterworth nestling in it beside its fast-flowing River Codder, and beyond that, gradually rising ground, terminating in another boundless stretch of hills. Hatterworth, built of local stone, seemed to fit snugly in the general scene. Its long rows of three-storeyed cottages, its public buildings, chimneys and towers and its open-spaces were ranged along a lower highroad which, from the hillside, seemed a mere thread winding into the distance. Between the high Milestone Road and the town, the wilderness had been tamed to man’s uses. Rough, dry stone walls divided it like a great chessboard. Cattle and sheep in the sloping fields. A labourer slinging lime on the green grass of a meadow, the powder flying like steam. The eternal battle between man and the moor to hold it in check. In the distance, the white smoke of a train, laboriously mounting the ridge into the heart of West Riding.
The car climbed gallantly. Telegraph poles, heavy-laden with wires and in close formation against the weather, like an army with ranks closed against an enemy, swept past the policemen. Across the open moor, the Home Guard were deployed and busily manœuvring. Having laid bare the problem of the skeleton and turned it over to the proper authorities, they had now returned to more important and urgent tasks than those of the dry bones of the past. The place was dotted with khaki-clad figures, running, leaping, stumbling, attacking, earnest in their mock-battling. The “enemy” from West Riding was attempting, with little apparent success, to wrest Hatterworth and its upper and lower roads from the native volunteers.
The car pulled-up at a spot by the road and the two officers climbed out. At this place a rough bridge spanned the wayside stream and thence a path struck across the moor. The track had been almost obliterated by time, but had apparently, at some distant date, been used by vehicles for carrying stone from a small disused quarry on the hillside. About fifty yards from the highway along this rough road and beside a shrivelled gorse-bush, stood a small knot of men. Two were in their shirt-sleeves, digging; the others consisted of two policemen, a rough-looking fellow who seemed to be a moorland farmer or hired-hand, and a member of the Home Guard. The policemen saluted as the newcomers arrived; the men with the digging-tools followed suit, proving also to be constables.
“Well, boys,” said Haworth good-humouredly. “Found anything?”
“We’ve got up all the bones, sir,” replied one of the excavators, passing his hand over his sweating brow. Dr. Griffiths has been up but said he couldn’t do anything until we’d finished and found the lot. We’re to take them to the mortuary for him when the job’s done. There they are.”
He indicated a tarpaulin sheet on which were spread a motley assortment of dirty bones, browned and fouled from the action of the damp peat in which they had for so long lain. A brown skull leered from among them. There were shreds of clothing adhering to parts of them and old, rotten leather indicated that the corpse had been shod when buried. A twelve-bore shot-gun, its barrels caked with rust and earth, but its stock remarkably well-preserved, also reposed on the waterproof sheet. Haworth touched it gingerly.
“Buried him with his weapons like a chieftain, I see,” he said. “No doubt we’ll be able to identify and trace the gun, too.”
One of the policemen was, with great thoroughness, passing the earth through a number of sieves and extracting small articles from the residue. Haworth turned to him and smiled.
“A nice job you’ve got there, Hickling. Have you found anything worth shouting about?”
The constable raised a youthful, rosy face and grinned in response.
“Some coins, sir, a watch, a clasp-knife, pipe, baccatin, and about ten pellets, lead ones, which have probably fallen out of the body as it’s decayed. Dr. Griffiths was most particular about finding those if we could.”
“Good. Carry on, Hickling. Fiddling work, but very important. Gather all the stuff together when you’ve finished and bring it down to the station. We’ll go through it thoroughly there. And now, Littlejohn, as far as I can, I’ll show you where Trickett’s body was found. As I said, I wasn’t here at the time, but I’ve had the spot pointed-out to me. It’s across here.”
Haworth led the way from the rough road, across the moor for about fifty yards. A dry wall, tumble-down and neglected, had at one time marked off a small intake or holding, the farmhouse of which now stood a gaunt ruin on the farthermost boundary. Half-way along the off-side of the wall was another stunted gorse-bush, tortured by wind and weather. Haworth pointed to it.
“That’s the spot. You see it’s not far from where they’ve found Sykes. The old theory was that the first was killed by the second, who made a clean getaway. Now, with the discovery of the other corpse, that theory—a score of years old—is exploded. We’ve to begin again, probably with all the clues gone and the bulk of the useful witnesses dead.”
Littlejohn puffed vigorously at his pipe and glanced around.
The vast, cold moor was a rare place for holding secrets. A silence seemed to brood over it, punctuated now and then by the cries of birds or the shouts of the Home Guard, still manœuvring vigorously. Even the presence of so many men over the wide expanse seemed powerless to dispel the loneliness. The elemental seemed to hang over the scene. The creeping fingers of the powers of destruction worked unseen, twisting and stunting the vegetation, tearing down the boundaries erected by man, shattering his habitation and sliding relentlessly over fields he had cultivated, dragging them back to the wilderness.
“I think it’ll be a good idea, Littlejohn, if we call on the man who was in charge of the crime at the time. He’s the man I followed, Superintendent Pickersgill. His house is on the outskirts of the town. There’ll be flesh and blood in his tale, if we can get him talking, and an account from him will fill-in the dry bones of the report on the files, which should be here later in the day.”
“Good idea. We’ve time before lunch, if you like.”
“Right, Littlejohn. We’ll be off then. Funnily enough, the chief before Pickersgill, Inspector Entwistle, is still alive, too, and living with Pickersgill and his wife. His father-in-law. Between them, they should be able to give us a tale. The old chap’s about eighty, but very full of beans. The pair of them are mad on hens. We’ll probably find them in the hen-run.”
The pair of detectives made for the highroad and entered the car. The air was cold and clear. Leaden clouds showed in the distance.
“Looks like snow,” said Haworth, adjusting the rugs round their knees.
Gently they coasted down to the valley. On the way, they passed the victorious Home Guard, mustered and marching smartly back to town.
Littlejohn glanced back and, through the smal
l rear window, saw the police, their task finished, gingerly carrying in a tarpaulin all that was left of Enoch Sykes and a tragedy of years long gone.
Chapter IV
Conference in a Hen-Pen
On then, on and away, ere the sun be set!
Ere on the moorland, the evening mists enfold me,
And my chattering teeth and feeble, tottering limbs
Presage the end…
—Goethe
The car halted before a neat bungalow, set back on a bank overlooking the road. The detectives climbed out, mounted the gravel path, and Haworth rang the doorbell.
The face of a shrewish-looking woman was thrust round the curtains of the front room, rapidly withdrawn and, a moment later, the door flew open.
“’Morning, Mrs. Pickersgill. Is Charlie at home?”
“Yes. He’s with my father among th’ hens. They spend all their time there nowadays.”
No wonder! thought Littlejohn.
Ex-Superintendent Pickersgill’s wife looked a tartar. Quite obvious that she wore the trousers. A thin, masterful-looking woman of medium build. Long, thin nose; sharp, grey eyes. Hair gathered in a tremendous grey bun and held rigidly in position by what looked like a fish-net. A look of perpetual, meddling curiosity. Evidently a native of those parts, for she spoke broadly and with little evidence of polish.
When Pickersgill was a sergeant under Inspector Entwistle, his ambition led him into marrying his chief’s daughter, who had already set her cap at him. He admired her cooking and thrift, and the partnership had proved a success. Mrs. Pickersgill was reputed to be the brains of the show. It was said that her husband had got on at his job through working-off on his men and his cases the energy which he was forced to repress at home. Their five children—all girls—took after their mother in thrift and forthrightness, but their father was their favourite. They formed a bodyguard round him, protecting him from the horrors of being totally henpecked. The last of his daughters was married a month before the Superintendent retired on pension. The situation was saved by his wife’s father coming to live with them. Ex-Inspector Entwistle, who was a widower, took fright at the overtures of his housekeeper, who was beginning to make matrimonial passes at him in spite of his great age. The old man brought his hens with him. The ex-policemen thereupon formed a partnership, built the most sumptuous runs and scratching sheds, and spent all their time in the company of their birds.
The Dead Shall be Raised and The Murder of a Quack Page 3