The Dark Corners

by Robert J. Tilley

  Contents

  COPYRIGHT INFORMATION

  THE DARK CORNERS

  FIENDS AND NEIGHBOURS

  THE DEVIL AND MR. WOOLLER

  THE OTHER MAN

  THE GREAT GOLF MYSTERY

  MIRROR, MIRROR

  DARK DILEMMA

  ABOUT ROBERT J. TILLEY

  COPYRIGHT INFORMATION

  Copyright © 2014 by Robert J. Tilley.

  All rights reserved.

  Published by Wildside Press LLC.

  www.wildsidebooks.com

  These stories were previously published as follows, and are reprinted by permission of the author and his agent, Cosmos literary Agency.

  “The Dark Corners” was first published in Vision of Tomorrow #10 in 1970. Copyright © 1970 by Robert J. Tilley.

  “Fiends and Neighbours” was first published as “Fiends For Neighbours” in Nebula Science Fiction #28 in 1958. Copyright © 1958 by Robert J. Tilley.

  “The Devil and Mr. Wooller” was first published in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine for September 1955. Copyright © 1955 by Robert J. Tilley.

  “The Other Man” was first published in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine for May 1967. Copyright © 1967 by Robert J. Tilley.

  “The Great Golf Mystery” was first published in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine for February 1968. Copyright © 1968 by Robert J. Tilley.

  “Mirror, Mirror” and “Dark Dilemma” are original to this collection. Copyright © 2014 by Robert J. Tilley.

  THE DARK CORNERS

  A tall hedge concealed the house from the road and the open fields on either side. Beyond it, an unkempt lawn straggled beside the curving driveway that bulged into a half-circle of gravel where it ran across the front of the building. The grey stone of the house itself had almost disappeared, now only visible in shadowed patches among the tangle of ivy that covered it.

  “Ideal sort of premises,” Chapman said. He eased into neutral, and let the car coast to a gently crunching halt by the front porch. His bright bird’s eyes flicked appraisingly across the clutter of leaves and coarse vines. “Just about as isolated as anything around here, I should think. Looks as if he might have had something of the sort in mind when he moved in.”

  “Except for the fact,” Hull said, “that he was left it by his uncle. That makes that line of reasoning a bit too complicated for my taste.” He pushed his door open, and swung his feet out onto the gravel. Chapman switched off the ignition, frowning slightly, then followed suit.

  Hull mounted the steps leading to the front door, and thumbed the tarnished bell-push that showed among the encroaching greenery. Somewhere inside the house a bell rang faintly, followed immediately by a deep-throated bark.

  Chapman paused on the steps, cocking his head. “Didn’t know he had a dog. Sounds like a big one.”

  “Yes,” Hull said. He stood with his back to the house, slowly swivelling his head to study the grounds. They were in poor repair. Tufts of grass littered the driveway and the open area of gravel, and the lawn was almost knee-high and flecked with the bright yellow of dandelions. A greenhouse beyond the low privet hedge to their right was starting to weather badly, and the hedge itself was untrimmed.

  Inside the house, footsteps clicked towards them. There was a pause, the grating snap of a catch, and the door opened.

  The man who peered out at them was middle-aged and rather stocky, with red hair receding slowly from a freckled forehead. He wore a dark green cardigan over an open-necked shirt, and held a dirty metal dish in his hand. His roundly ageless face was very tired.

  “Yes?”

  Hull said, “Mr. James Pardoe?”

  “That’s right.”

  “My name is Inspector Hull, and this is Detective-Sergeant Chapman. We would like a few words with you if we may, sir.”

  “Oh?” the red-haired man said. His face had tightened, almost perceptibly. “What about?”

  Hull said, “If we could come inside for just a moment—” He let his voice trail off, his eyes on Pardoe’s face.

  “Is that strictly necessary?”

  Hull nodded. “I rather think that it may be.”

  There was a pause. Pardoe stared past them, his mouth small and his face thoughtful. Then he shrugged, shook his head slightly, and pulled the door towards him. “Come in.”

  Hull stepped past him into the shadowed coolness of a tiled corridor, Chapman following. A little way down the passage, a large alsatian stood, its tongue projecting from the side of its mouth and its eyes fixed brightly on them.

  Pardoe closed the door, and said, “Here, Dan.” The dog jerked into movement, lowering its head and padding to them with relaxed, graceful steps. Pardoe fondled its muzzle, and gestured towards an open door on their left. “We’d better go in there.”

  It was a living room, shabby, and stale with the mingled smells of the dog and cooked food. A cloth covered a small mahogany table, and a used plate sat on it, dull with grease. There was a beaker beside it, and a sauce bottle. Books littered the room, piled precariously on the mantel-piece and the end of a decrepit chaise-lounge.

  Yellowed hunting prints were spaced precisely on two of the distempered walls.

  “Sit down,” Pardoe said. He put the metal dish on the table, nodding vaguely towards the crockery. “You’ll have to excuse the dishes. I’ve been rather busy.”

  “Quite all right,” Hull said. He seated himself in a worn leather armchair, placing his hat on the carpet beside him. Chapman moved a pile of magazines to the sideboard, and sat on a straight-backed dining chair. Pardoe stood by the table, one hand resting lightly on the dog’s head, a look of stiffly polite enquiry on his face.

  Hull said, “Mr. Pardoe, I have to ask you some questions. It shouldn’t take very long, but before we start I feel there’s something you should be told. Certain information has been brought to our attention that has led us to some pretty damaging conclusions.”

  “Really?” Pardoe said. “Involving me in some way?” His voice, like his face, was courteously empty.

  Hull said, “It appears so, yes. I understand that you are employed as head of the history department at Corley Grammar School.”

  “Yes.”

  “One of your pupils was a boy called Philip Carver. I say was, because of his disappearance two months ago. At that time a colleague of mine questioned you, together with the rest of the staff at Corley. You stated then that you knew nothing at all that might help us with our investigations as to the boy’s whereabouts. We drew a blank all round, and until this morning we had no idea at all where he might have got to. Now we’re pretty sure we know.”

  Pardoe said nothing, but his hand, which had been moving gently on the dog’s head, was now quite still. Chapman moved slightly in his chair.

  Hull said, “About a mile from here, there’s a farm owned by some people called Hucker. A week ago, the Hucker children, two boys and a girl, say they were in your grounds. They were pretty quiet about it, because they were trespassing, and they took care to keep well under cover. While they were here, they heard a noise, someone shouting. They thought it might possibly be aimed at them at first, so they hid in some rhododendron bushes by the side of the house, and then they say they saw something very odd.” Hull paused, and tilted his head, queryingly. “Would you like to hazard a guess at what it was, Mr. Pardoe?”

  The red-haired man’s face was suddenly very pale, and his eyes were closed. He opened his mouth, made a faint sound and then closed it again. He shook his head, very slowly.

  Hull said, “They saw a boy run from this house, followed by a man. The boy looked very frightened, they say, and he was yelling something that could have been a cry for help. He fell in the driveway, and the man caught him. When he’d
caught him, he hit him so hard that he almost knocked him unconscious, then he dragged him back inside the house. From their description, it would rather appear that the man was you. Was the boy Philip Carver?”

  Pardoe’s teeth showed briefly, then his eyes opened. His voice sounded clogged. “Why did you take so long to get here?”

  “The children were frightened, and they didn’t tell their parents about it for a couple of days. They’d been trespassing, and children can be a bit funny about things like that. They don’t know how to compare values too well at times. When they finally did speak up, their father thought about it for another couple of days before telling us. Grown-ups can be pretty silly, too, but children do make up some weird and wonderful stories.” Hull paused, and cocked his head again. “Where is he?”

  Pardoe said, “Upstairs.” His voice was almost inaudible and his face was sick. Hull jerked his head at Chapman.

  Chapman stood up, and said, “Is there a key?”

  “Wait,” Pardoe said. He took a very deep breath, and leaned back against the table, lowering his hands to its edge. Hull saw them shaking as he gripped it. “Before you fetch him, I must tell you something.”

  “There’ll be plenty of time to make a statement when we get to the station,” Hull said. He reached down for his hat. “I think that the most important thing now is to get—”

  “No,” Pardoe said. It was a dryly staccato sound, more an order than a protest. Beside him, the dog growled and stiffened. “No, you must hear this before we go.”

  There was a brief silence in the room. Hull said, “We have to be sure that the boy is all right first.”

  Pardoe frowned, and looked at him, searchingly. “Then you’ll hear what I have to say?”

  Hull nodded. “If you think it’s that important. Can you make it short?”

  Pardoe shook his head, a rapid, nervous jerking that continued as he talked. “No, not very. But I must tell it before we get away from here, into a—” He lifted a hand, and helplessly dropped it again “—an official atmosphere. This is the only place where it will make sense. At least—” He stopped, and stared confusedly at the floor.

  “You appreciate, of course, that anything you say may be later used in evidence,” Hull said. He looked at Chapman. “Go and find him, then take him to the kitchen, wherever that is. Make him a sandwich or something, until we’re ready.” To Pardoe, he said, “Is that all right with you?”

  Pardoe nodded, silently, then reached into a trouser pocket and produced a Yale key. He handed it to Chapman without looking at him. Chapman took it, and walked to the door. The dog watched him go, poised uncertainly, and then slowly relaxed as he passed out of sight. His feet sounded, mounting the stairs.

  There was silence, broken only by the almost inaudible scolding of a bird, somewhere outside the house. Pardoe leaned against the table, his head lowered and his eyes closed. When he started to speak, it was in a flat monotone, a dead voice, that sounded expressionlessly in the thick-atmosphere confines of the room.

  “My reason for coming to this part of the country was this house. My uncle died just over eighteen months ago and left it to me, and I came down from Bradford, where I was teaching, simply to look it over before selling it. I liked it, despite the fact that it was really much too big for a single man, and I decided I’d like to keep it. I had a vague idea at the time that I might be able to turn it into two flats, or something of the kind, but I decided later that I preferred the idea of solitude. The job at Corley was advertised two months afterwards, and I got it and moved in here at the beginning of the winter term. That was ten months ago, and the first time that I met Philip Carver.”

  Hull interrupted. “Perhaps you’d better sit down. You look rather shaky.”

  “Yes,” Pardoe said. He walked to the chaise-lounge, pushed some books to one side, and sat down, resting his arms horizontally across his thighs. The dog crossed the room to him, sniffing impersonally at the carpet, then slumped loosely at his feet, its eyes closed. Pardoe continued speaking in the same dull, disinterested tone.

  “He was in the upper fourth form when I first knew him. His reputation was a not unusual one among boys of that age. He produced spurts of brilliance in his work, but he was erratic. His most notable feature was a genuine oddity, though, but not recognised as such by many members of the staff. The majority seemed satisfied to refer to him as a toady, but they were rather missing the point. He seemed to have the knack of anticipating people’s wants to a remarkably accurate degree. I noticed this myself soon after I started, and it puzzled me, certainly more so than the rest of the people there. As I say, they were inclined to dismiss him as a fairly standard sort of boot-licker, but I became rapidly convinced that he was something much more than that.”

  He paused. Above them, there was the slam of a door, and then, very faintly, the sound of voices. He ran his tongue across his lips, and blinked, once.

  “I finally caught him out during a mock school certificate exam. I hadn’t consciously laid a trap, or anything like that, but under the circumstances it was hardly surprising that he blundered. The paper was a very general thing, dealing with no particular period of history, that I’d concocted rather hurriedly on the evening prior to the exam. That’s the way these things usually happen; they’re supposed to be prepared two or three weeks before, but they always seem to get delayed for one reason or another. There was some sickness among the staff at that time, and it was necessary to take quite a few extra classes. I hadn’t time to get it typed and duplicated, so I was going to write the questions on the blackboard. When I got to the room where the class was waiting for the exam, I had two monitors distribute pens, ink, and foolscap paper to each boy. While this was being done, I checked through the questions that I was going to put to them. I was half-way through doing this, checking them against the answers, when the headmaster’s secretary appeared. She said that if I hadn’t already started the exam, would I please go and see the head immediately. I went, taking the question paper with me.”

  The footsteps that had been slowly descending the stairs stopped. Hull heard Chapman’s voice, querying, followed by a muttered, hesitant reply.

  The dog’s head snapped up. Slowly, it uncurled and rose, its eyes fixed rigidly on the open doorway. Pardoe reached out a hand to its head, patting it very slowly and gently. He smiled bleakly at Hull, saying nothing.

  Chapman appeared in the doorway. He looked briefly at Hull and Pardoe, then back up the stairs. He said, “Come on, son, it’s all right. There’s nothing to be afraid of.” His voice was loud, and very cheerful.

  There was a pause, then dragging footsteps sounded again. Hull watched the doorway, conscious of Pardoe’s mask-like smile, and his hand, still moving rhythmically on the dog’s head.

  The boy was thin and very pale, and he looked none too clean. He wore a grey flannel suit that was very crumpled, with a blue and yellow badge on breast pocket of the jacket. He was rather plain, and pimples discoloured his chin and forehead. He stared at Pardoe, saying nothing.

  Hull said to him, “How are you, son?”

  The boy moved his gaze from Pardoe, and looked at Hull. He seemed not to have heeded the question, then said, “Very well, thank you,” rather abruptly. His eyes moved back to Pardoe’s bleak, polite smile, and he frowned.

  Hull nodded to Chapman. “Take him along and get him something to eat. We shan’t be very long.”

  “Right,” Chapman said. He touched the boy’s shoulder. “Let’s go and see what there is in the pantry, shall we?

  After a moment, the boy nodded, then turned away without speaking. As he moved out of sight, Hull saw the look of puzzlement on his face, and the final rapid flick of his eyes towards Pardoe. Chapman followed him out of sight, his uncomfortably genial grin still in position.

  Hull looked back at Pardoe. The smile was still there, but it held a hint of exhaustion now, and the movement of his hand appeared as more of a dying reflex than a deliberate action.

&
nbsp; Hull said, “What happened when you got there?”

  Pardoe shut his eyes, then opened them again. When he spoke, his voice was quiet and very tired, but it contained expression now.

  “The head produced the copy of the exam paper that I’d left with him after assembly that morning, and told me that something seemed to have gone rather amiss. He asked if, before I’d prepared my questions, I’d checked back through the papers set by my predecessor. I confessed that I hadn’t, due to circumstances of work. He then pointed out that, in fact, my paper contained several questions that were very similar to some that had been put to the same boys on previous occasions, two of them no more than a year before. He has a quite exceptional memory, and it was just the sort of thing that he would recollect. In view of this oversight, he suggested that the easiest solution to the problem would be to use a paper that had originally been put five years ago, before any of the present pupils had been at the school. I agreed to this, apologised for the trouble that was being caused, and then he had his secretary fetch the old paper from the files. We checked it as quickly as we could, and found that this time none of the questions appeared to be suspect.”

  Pardoe continued his gentle massaging of the dog’s head, a faint spark of animation beginning to show in his face as he talked.

  “I took the paper back to the classroom, and started to write the new questions on the blackboard. While I was doing this, the piece of chalk that I was using broke. I turned to my desk to get another piece, and saw Carver slipping something into his inside jacket pocket. I told him to bring it out to the front of the class and give it to me.” He hesitated, briefly. “I’ve never seen an expression on anyone’s face like the one that I saw then. It was a compound of terror and rage, and I was very startled by it. He stayed where he was until I told him again, much more forcefully the second time. Then he came out and handed it to me. It was a piece of foolscap, and written on it were the answers to the first two questions on my original question paper.”

  Hull frowned, looking sharply at him.