“That’s an idea, and a useful job I can perform to start with. I’ll give you a paraphrase, then, of what I’ve gathered. Fill up your pipe and make yourself comfortable.”
Haworth began his narrative and as the details unfolded themselves, Littlejohn got a picture of the scene and the incidents as they occurred in October, 1917.
He saw the great stretch of moorland, spread like a patchwork quilt in dark browns, greens and purples. Rough, trackless ground, with shrivelled heather, wimberry bushes and golden, dying bracken. Blackened stone walls dividing the holdings and mounds of peat drying beside the cuttings.
From the reservoirs of the neighbouring towns, hidden over the rim of the moor, seagulls rose, wheeling and crying. The bubbling call of the curlew. Human voices raised in hoarse chatter, quarrelling, laughing coarsely. There had been a shoot that day at the neighbouring butts, and a few of the motley crew of grouse-drivers and beaters were busy getting drunk at the Horse and Jockey, a lonely old inn, four-square to the winds, low-built of weathered local stone, which stood at the top of the road between Hatterworth and Waterfold. A haunt of wayfarers, sportsmen and their hangers-on, poachers, and those who liked to develop a thirst by travelling far to slake it.
Along the skyline, silhouetted against the flaming setting sun, a ragged series of tortured crags spread like a row of rotten teeth.
At the Horse and Jockey, the landlord, Seth Wigley, had his hands full. Enough to have a crowd of drunken beaters and loaders in the place. But here, too, was Enoch Sykes, roaring-drunk with rum, saying what he’d do to Jerry Trickett when he caught up with him. He hadn’t to wait long.
Trickett entered the inn-yard with two of his pals. He had been shooting at the butts. For some reason, he and Sykes had free access to Caleb Haythornthwaite’s land and where the likes of them were usually sent packing, they were tolerated, even on days when an organized shoot was arranged for Caleb’s fine friends from among the local iron and woollen-masters.
Sykes spotted his one-time friend through the taproom window and, cursing, made for his gun, which he had propped in one corner, the better to handle his drink. Seth Wigley reached the weapon first.
“Nay, Enoch, yer not takin’ that gun out with ye. Let it bide where it is.”
The landlord was a large, fat man and the befuddled poacher seemed to see the sense in not trying conclusions with him. He staggered into the courtyard unarmed.
An expectant silence fell over the potwallopers lounging outside. They wanted the excitement of a fight but had no stomach for a shooting match. Trickett’s companions whispered words of encouraging caution. They urged him to leave his gun with them and to wade-in and wipe-up the cockpit with Sykes’s body. Their prudence was quite uncalled for. Trickett halted in his stride and waited for Sykes, who stood glaring, framed in the doorway of the inn. An ominous hush fell over everyone. The two cows could be heard snorting and chewing in the little byre. Seth Wigley, unperturbed, continued pumping-up a glass of ale. Slowly without a pause, he drank it off and emerged from his bar, a set expression on his good-natured, red face. He held Sykes’s gun in his huge hand.
The suspense did not last long, for the tense scene ended in a ridiculous anti-climax. Sykes launched himself from the doorway, broke into a shambling trot, his arms milling, in the direction of his enemy. His heavy boots clanked on the cobbles of the yard. Trickett set himself to receive the impact. The running man caught his foot on a projecting stone, tripped, tottered on his toes, and measured his length on the ground. He lay there, stunned and flabbergasted.
In two long strides Seth Wigley was on him. He picked him up by the collar of his coat, ran him out of the yard and down the road for a distance. Then he handed him his gun.
“Now be off with thee, afore ah sock thy jaw. I’m havin’ no rough-houses on my property. Licences are hard enough to keep clean without the likes o’ thee about th’ place. So, in future, keep thy distance.”
And, like a farmer driving a lively colt to grass, the landlord gestured to the drunken man to be on his road and then strolled back to his taproom. On the way, he stopped to speak to Trickett, who was enjoying the joke, not without signs of relief, among a crowd of half-drunken cronies.
“And as for thee, Jerry. Give thy old pal a wide berth if tha values thy skin. He’s nursin’ trouble for thee, lad.”
“Don’t thee bother thy head about me, Seth. Ah’m well able to tend mysel’.”
Whereat, he followed the landlord indoors, drank a pint of his home-brew and went his way, carrying the birds he had bagged by their frail-looking legs.
The topers continued to guzzle, boast and guffaw. Wigley turned the worst of them out; the rest called for bread and cheese and prepared for a further session until closing-time. The war was hardly remembered amid the talk of past days and the tales of old hunting and shooting, and crude practical joking. The incident of earlier in the evening was forgotten in the din.
The landlord poked the fire, drew the curtains and lit a brass oil-lamp, which dangled from a beam in the taproom. It was almost dark outside. A carter on his way to Waterfold had stopped to wet his whistle and was telling the latest news from the town to a knot of owlish-looking, half-drunken labourers. A maid, buxom and red-cheeked, entered carrying a fresh bottle of whisky for the bar. Someone smacked her behind as she passed. There was a loud roar of laughter. The girl turned to give the libertine the length of her tongue…Across the moor a shot sounded.
A hush fell over the room as though someone had snuffed-out the noise.
“By God, somebody’s keepin’ th’ grouse up late,” said the carter, his glass poised half-way to his mouth. He drank.
“Sounds some distance away,” hiccupped someone else.
“Hope it’s not them two crazy devils finishin’ off their rumpus…”
Seth Wigley looked uneasy. Somebody rattled a glass for a re-fill. The landlord dismissed his forebodings and walked round to attend to his customer. The clock in the passage struck six. At five minutes past, there was another shot…
At dawn the following morning, Seth Wigley rose from his wife’s side, padded across the oilcloth in his bare feet, drew the blind, removed a sandbag from the junction of the two sashes, raised the bottom one, and breathed deeply. Mr. Wigley allowed as little night air to enter his bedroom from the outside as possible. He considered it injurious.
“Grand mornin’, lass,” he said to the buxom figure he had left behind in the bed. Mrs. Wigley grunted, turned over luxuriously, and fell asleep again.
The landlord of the Horse and Jockey suddenly thrust his head out of the open window and began to bawl loudly.
“Hey, thee! Ah’ve told thee before to keep out o’ this place. If ah catch thee in my stables agen, Three-Fingers, ah’ll take a gun to thee…”
But the intruder was off round the corner of the inn, followed by a slatternly woman with a good figure and red hair.
Seth turned again to his wife.
“There’s Three-Fingers just taken a night’s free lodgin’ in my stables along with that bitch of a woman he’s knockin’ around with. Some time, he’ll have th’ place on fire and then perhaps ah’ll rue not lockin’-up my buildings…Anyhow, ah’ll notify th’ police about this. Happen they’ll warn him off and tell him to keep his distance. Ah don’t trust that chap.”
He slipped on his shirt and trousers without waiting for a reply and, hurrying downstairs, passed through the untidy taproom, littered with dirty glasses and reeking with last night’s stale smoke, and clumped across the yard to make sure that all was well.
Meanwhile, the man and woman who had helped themselves to Seth Wigley’s hospitality overnight, were hurrying down to Hatterworth. The third finger of the tramp’s right hand was missing and he was therefore known as Three-Fingers. A legend was attached to the missing member to the effect that, suffering from blood-poisoning in it, its owner had stoical
ly cut it off with a pair of scissors. He was an unpleasant-looking customer. A general look of disproportion about his face. His mouth, nose and eyes seemed pushed too near the top of his head. Long, broken nose, weak, receding chin, loose mouth with yellow, broken teeth and a long, sloping upper lip. Like a grotesque tailor’s dummy, constructed with freakish features to attract passers-by. Since he had picked up with the woman who accompanied him, he had shaved himself with more or less regularity.
The woman would have been a beauty had she used soap and water more and properly groomed her magnificent head of hair. The life the pair of them were leading, however, did not permit fastidiousness. She was young, of middle stature, with long legs and a broad, full breast. Her features were on the heavy side, but her complexion was flawless and exquisitely tanned beneath a coating of grime, acquired from sleeping-out and lack of toilet facilities. Every movement of her fine, muscular limbs showed through the thin dress she was wearing. How such a creature could see anything in Three-Fingers sufficient to make her cast her lot with him, was a mystery. Both of them seemed satisfied with the arrangement, however, and tramped contentedly, saying little, down to town…
About half an hour after Seth Wigley had satisfied himself about the security of his property, Jethro Hamer jingled past the inn in his milk-cart. He was off to Hatterworth to deliver his wares, door-to-door, to the houses of the town. A small, moorland farmer with a few cows and a contented spirit. His little mare tittupped happily downhill, the harness chinked and rang, Jethro whistled a tune and tried to chew a bit of straw at the same time. “Mornin’, Seth,” he yelled as he passed the pub, “goin’ to be a grand day.” And he was out of earshot before Wigley could reply.
Suddenly, the little farmer flung his weight on the reins. The pony halted, almost rearing in her hind legs. Hamer’s eyes were on the heather about a hundred yards from the roadside. Sprawling face downwards there, was the figure of a man. The milkman clicked his tongue at his mare, drew her gently to the verge of the road, descended, and ran to the spot, stumbling over the uneven ground as he went.
The body was cold and damp with dew. The farmer knelt and lifted the head. “My God!” he said, and turned white under his hard-baked tan. “Seth, Seth,” he bawled and, as the innkeeper, hearing the cry almost a quarter of a mile away on the still air, poked his head round the side of the house, the farmer flailed the air with his arms to bid him approach.
Seth Wigley was as appalled as his companion.
“Jerry Trickett!” he said. “So that accounts for one of th’ shots last neet. He must ’ave caught-up with Sykes after all…”
He gasped as he spoke. Hurrying over the rough turf and the shock on top of it had got him in the wind. In a few words he told Hamer of last night’s events.
“Ah’m off for th’ police right away,” said the dairyman, and broke into a run back to his float. Whipping up his mare, he sped down to Hatterworth, leaving the innkeeper guarding the body.
Chapter VI
Superintendent Pickersgill’s Solution
‘But what good came of it at last?’
Quoth little Peterkin.
‘Why, that I cannot tell’ said he,
‘But ’twas a famous victory’.
—Robert Southey
Littlejohn listened with rapt attention to Haworth’s story. The Inspector’s pipe had gone out and he had even forgotten the whisky at his elbow.
The Superintendent had a faculty for colourful narrative. A local man, he had known all the characters in the tale and briefly sketched their main features, like a black-and-white artist giving a clear impression in a few swift lines.
“You’re a born spinner of yarns,” said Littlejohn, as they paused to re-charge and light their pipes and fill-up the glasses.
“When you love the hills and valleys you live among, it comes easy,” said Haworth simply and gathering up the threads once more, continued with his re-construction from the records before him. His colleague was soon immersed in the history of the case again.
Superintendent Pickersgill rode into his appointment as head of the Hatterworth police force on the shoulders of his wife’s father. Not only that; he had the good luck to be promoted from Inspector to Super on the improvement of the status of his district, owing to the growth of the town and the absorption of several rural areas in it.
Ex-Inspector Entwistle had a good brain. Sound common sense and shrewdness made up for much he had missed in early technical training, for in his youth, the force had little of the paraphernalia of scientific detection. The notebooks which Haworth had borrowed showed how much Pickersgill owed to the old man in bringing cases to their successful endings.
The photographs of the body which accompanied the files showed it as the milkman had found it, sprawling face downwards. A tall, heavily-built corpse, clad in an old jacket, breeches of the army type, black stockings and heavy, nailed boots. A double-barrelled hammer-gun of the usual sporting model lay beside the body. The records stated that there were six undischarged cartridges in the victim’s pocket, but the gun was unloaded when found. The cartridges were of the cheapest Eley make and were loaded with size 5 shots.
The police-surgeon’s report showed that death had occurred about the time the reports were heard the night before. Trickett had received a full charge at close quarters, and in the back. The heart was pierced and the backbone shattered.
The first thoughts of the police were concerning Enoch Sykes. He had disappeared altogether. His mother, with whom he lived, had seen nothing of him since the morning of the grouse-shoot, when he had taken a day off work and left with his gun for the moor.
The verbatim report of the inquest was a long and detailed document.
Mr. Benjamin Butterworth, a local solicitor and county coroner, presided. A tall, slim, peppery old man, with a plentiful shock of snow-white hair, a pink complexion and a white moustache, and thick, grey eyebrows, which he raised and lowered eloquently and effectively. Piercing, grey eyes behind shining gold-rimmed glasses. In opening the proceedings the coroner made a few scathing remarks concerning the crowded state of the public-hall in which the inquest was held. In war-time, he said, it ill became people to flock to an enquiry of this kind as a form of entertainment. They would be better employed working in the national interest. He added that the least sign of disturbance or even fidgeting, would cause him to clear the court.
The police evidence was formal. Pickersgill was sure that Sykes had killed his friend and did not even ask for an adjournment. The evidence of Seth Wigley and a number of others was taken on the matter of the shots at dusk and the commotion in the yard of the inn on the memorable afternoon. It was firmly established that there was bad blood between the two former friends.
“What were they doing out of the army, two able-bodied men in their twenties?” asked Mr. Butterworth.
“Both were skilled engineers, employed by Cross and Haythornthwaite, and were exempted by the tribunal on that account,” replied the police Superintendent.
Mary Tatham, the girl previously courted by Sykes and who had later transferred her affections to Trickett, was questioned. She was a dark slip of a thing, with a good figure and plump, rosy cheeks, and usually had a ready, flashing smile for everyone. At the inquest, she was greatly distressed. She had been out with Trickett the previous week-end.
“I don’t want to distress you further,” said Mr. Butterworth, his glasses sparkling and his eyes in no way losing their piercing firmness, “but were you the cause of the bad feeling which existed between the two men?”
The witness burst into tears. Later, growing calmer, she was able to continue.
“They quarrelled about me.”
“You were previously engaged to Sykes and broke-off the affair for Trickett?”
“Not engaged. We were just going out a bit together.”
“You quarrelled?”
“Yes.”
“About your change of mind, was it?”
“We had a row before Jerry…Mr. Trickett, asked me to go out with ’im.”
“Now, I don’t wish to probe into private matters more than is absolutely necessary, but this is perhaps important. Was this a mere lovers’ squabble of a passing kind…or was it, shall we say, something more—ahem…fundamental and final?”
“Ah told Enoch ah never wanted to see ’im again.”
“Why?”
The girl hesitated and seemed to grope for words.
“Ah…ah didn’t love ’im any more…He’d changed from what he used to be…he were different.”
“In what way?”
“Oh, ever since he got work at Haythornthwaite’s and left Myles’s. He’d got a better job and more money, and some’ow it made ’im cocky and…and…not like his old self. ’E spent all the time we were out together swankin’ about what ’e were goin’ to do and the brass…money…he’d soon be makin’. He were so lost in his dreams, that he’d no time to give me a thought. Ah just got fed-up with it.”
“So you turned to his friend?”
The girl flushed and her eyes flashed.
“Nowt o’ th’ sort. Jerry Trickett axed me out and ah needed a bit o’ persuading after wot I’d bin through.”
“Very well. Did you ever see or hear the two quarrel?”
“Yes, and ah got sick of it! The first night ah went out with Jerry, Sykes was round the followin’ day, threatenin’ what he’d do to me and Jerry if ah didn’t stop it. He begged me to come back to ’im, but ah’d had enough. Ah sent him off. Then, folk began to tell me he was drinkin’ heavy. Him and Jerry had been quarrellin’ and fightin’ and it was all over the town that Enoch had said he’d swing one day for Jerry and th’ trick he’d done on him.”
The police surgeon, who had been absent hitherto on a maternity case, was none-the-less scolded for his disrespect of the court by the coroner. The doctor testified concerning the manner and time of death.
The Dead Shall be Raised and The Murder of a Quack Page 5