The Cursing Stones Murder (A Cozy Mystery Thriller) (Inspector Little John Series)

by George Bellairs

  "There's a dent, right enough. Did you knock anyone down on your way home to-night?"

  Fallows looked dumbfounded.

  "So that's it! No, I didn't. . . ."

  "A man was knocked down just outside Peel at the time you were passing there to-night, doctor. He's now in hospital in Douglas, unconscious. Are you sure . . . ?"

  "Quite sure. I couldn't have done it and not known about it. Why pick out my car?"

  "A car resembling yours was seen there and was responsible for the accident."

  "Who was injured?"

  "A fisherman-farmer called Ned Crowe!"

  Perrick watched Fallows closely.

  The doctor had been pale, but now he turned almost yellow.

  "Crowe? But this is preposterous!"

  "What do you mean?"

  "Nothing."

  "Come, sir, you were going to say something."

  "I've nothing to say."

  "Very well, doctor. Let me ask you another question. Where were you on the afternoon of August 21st?"

  "August 21st! What date's that and what has it to do with the accident to-night?"

  Perrick advanced a step nearer.

  "I'll tell you, sir. Ned Crowe farms the land at Gob y Deigan. We believe that on August 21st a man named Levis was murdered there, hidden in the Lynague caves until dusk, and then his body was rowed out to sea, weighted, and sunk."

  "What has that to do with me, may I ask?"

  Littlejohn felt sorry for Fallows. Under the ruthless questions and the successive verbal blows of the efficient Perrick, he was losing countenance and nerve. His wide forehead was bathed in sweat, his fingers jerked, and he kept licking his dry lips.

  "I'm sorry, doctor, but this has to be said. Cedric Levis was a friend of your wife's. . . . I might almost venture to say her lover. . . ."

  Fallows suddenly sprang at Perrick and grasped him by the lapels and shook him. The Inspector quickly recovered, seized the doctor's powerful wrists, and without effort flung him back.

  "I wouldn't, doctor, if I were you. . . . "

  "Don't you dare mention my wife. You're exceeding your duties. I shall speak to the Governor about this. I'll . . ."

  Perrick's voice was almost gentle.

  "Look, sir. All Peel knows about your wife and Levis. You also know. Why, otherwise, have you kept inquiring all over the place if this one or that one has seen them together? Then, Levis was murdered. Can't you see, it's to your advantage to provide an alibi? We just want to know where you were when Levis was killed. The inference is, it happened between noon, when he left his home, and five, when he should have caught a 'plane to the mainland, on August 21st. Where were you then?"

  Fallows sat down in his swivel chair. His patients were forgotten, although they were talking loud enough next-door.

  "I don't know."

  "You can't answer like that, just off-hand. Look at your diary, man. Try to think."

  Almost listlessly, Fallows opened a drawer and took out a book bound in red canvas. He thumbed the pages absently. Littlejohn saw August 21st appear.

  "It was my free afternoon. I went for a run on my own for a change. I'd no patients to see. I've no alibi. Nobody can help me. So, you see, Perrick, I'm all ready to be arrested."

  Fallows slumped down. He looked years older.

  "Well. . . . What are you waiting for, Perrick? Isn't it usual to warn people that what they say will be used in evidence? Get on with it."

  Perrick picked up the hat he'd earlier put on the desk.

  "We're not going to arrest you, doctor, but you'd better think where you were on the date in question. Also, I hope for your sake Crowe recovers. I'll say no more."

  Fallows was on his feet again.

  "Wait! Are you suggesting that Crowe knows something about my connection with Levis . . . or that he saw me at Gob y Deigan the day Levis was killed, and because of that, I ran him down in cold blood?"

  "You've put that construction on it, doctor, not me. All I'm saying is, we've got to make routine inquiries of everybody connected, or who might be connected with the murder of Levis and also with the accident to-night. I'm not accusing you of anything, far less arresting you, but I do urge you to think carefully of your movements on the day I mentioned and also, if you did accidentally knock anyone down in the dark to-night, make a clean breast of it and make our work easier."

  Fallows opened the door.

  "Leave me to my patients, Perrick. I've said all I'm going to say. I have no alibi for August 21st. You can please yourself what you make of that. As for to-night's little tragedy. . . . You seem intent on mixing me up with that, as well. Do your damnedest, Perrick. . . . Good night. . . ."

  He slammed the door on them and left them in the hall to see themselves out of the house.

  Perrick looked at Littlejohn and shrugged his shoulders.

  "What do you make of that, sir?"

  "Very strange behaviour. The man's overwrought about something. I was watching him as you spoke to him. He knows something he's not telling. I'm sure he's mixed up in the Levis affair. If not directly, then he's shielding his wife. Better keep an eye on the doctor. . . ."

  "Trust us, sir. What about to-night's accident?"

  "If Fallows knows nothing about it, then someone was trying to involve him in it. If the false-alarm story is true, then somebody is trying to incriminate Fallows. If, on the other hand, the doctor did knock down Crowe, it will need a lot to make me believe it wasn't deliberate and connected with the other murder."

  They took Perrick to his own car at the police-station and then Littlejohn drove back to Grenaby. On the way he told Archdeacon Kinrade of the painful interview with Dr. Fallows.

  "I can't believe it! He's not that type, Littlejohn."

  The Inspector replied gently.

  "Now, now, parson. Don't try classifying men into murderers and non-murderers. If you'd dealt with as many as I have, you'd change your mind. Anyone can commit a murder if provoked sufficiently. . . ."

  "There's just one thing, though, Littlejohn. You say the doctor can't . . . or won't . . . give himself an alibi for August 21st. I may be able to give him one."

  "You, sir!"

  "Whilst I was waiting in the hall for you, I occupied part of the time turning over the pad by the telephone, seeing if I knew the names of the people written in it. It's a call-book, presumably used by whoever answers the 'phone, to note down places the doctor must attend."

  "Well? And you looked at August 21st?"

  "Yes. It bears one entry. Beside each entry is the time the message was received. The only entry for the date in question is Eairy Cushlan, and the time taken, 10.30."

  "And what does Eairy Cushlan mean?"

  "It's a farm in the wilderness between Peel and the Round Table. That's the cross-roads high on the moorland, a junction for Port Erin, Colby and Foxdale. It's not far from Grenaby, really. You ought to go to Eairy Cushlan to-morrow and see what it's all about."

  "You're quite a detective, you know, Archdeacon. I don't know what I'd do without you. We'll go to Eairy Cushlan first thing in the morning."

  "One other thing I did. I took the liberty of using Fallows's telephone to ring up Noble's Hospital. Crowe has a good chance. The skull is fractured, but they have operated to relieve the pressure and short of the unexpected, he should pull through. You realize, don't you, that if this accident was deliberate, someone is going to have some explaining to do when Crowe comes round?"

  11

  EAIRY CUSHLAN

  "Kynnas-tha-shu. . . . Cre'n aght ta shiu jiu?"

  Two old Manxmen saying how-do-you-do!

  "Morra, morra, an' how are ye, are ye, for all?"

  Littlejohn and the Archdeacon had started, good and early, for Eairy Cushlan with Meg in the back seat.

  They turned from Grenaby into the uplands of the interior, climbed through Ronague, skirted South Barrule to the cross-roads at the Round Table, and thence coasted gently down the Dalby-Peel road.

>   There was a bite in the air which smelt of the sea; the sun was shining. As the road climbed, the land deteriorated until at length there wasn't even feeding for sheep. To the left, the ground rose, dark and peaty, and then fell sharply to the sea in high cliffs. From the crossways they could see a small house in the middle of a croft, the thin grassland of which looked like a little emerald in the vast background of turf.

  "That's Eairy Cushlan, Littlejohn. It means Cosnahan's Upland. . . . Take the track there . . . ."

  A partly metalled road leading from the main one taxed the springs of the car. About a mile away, a patch of windswept trees, then a square of gorse on top of a sod hedge, and in the stockade thus formed against the wind and weather, Eairy Cushlan.

  The farm was dead still. Not a dog to bark, or a child to shout. Even the few hens scratching and picking around worked in grim silence, as though the poor land called for intense concentration in finding bits of food. The cry of a distant curlew and the wailing of the gulls on the shore nearby only accentuated the quietness. The place seemed charged with a grim sadness, as though hope had gone and despair moved in.

  The old iron gate of the overgrown farmyard had been moved from its hinges and Littlejohn drew up the car before the gap. It was no use going further; the road ended there. A mere track led away into the wilderness. The Archdeacon indicated the path.

  "Leads to Lag ny Keeilly, the Hollow of the Cell, the remains of a little chapel and a graveyard where they buried the old Manx kings. . . . And on the way, you pass the Chibbyr Vashtee, The Christening Well, said to be good for consumption; Chibbyr means a well and Vashtee means Christening. . . ."

  The parson seemed to be talking simply to break the oppressive silence.

  The farm was almost a ruin and built of rough stone. Two up and two down, a few miserable outhouses for pigs and poultry, and a small cowshed with a loft above, reached by stone steps running up the outer wall. The two men got out of the car.

  "Kynnas-tha-shu. . . ."

  The old man sitting at the door in a rocking-chair and smoking a clay pipe, had watched them so quietly and unmoving that they hadn't noticed him. Now, on seeing the Archdeacon he had burst into lively action. The parson was equally excited.

  "Well, well, well. . . . If it isn't Billy-Bill-Illiam! Cre'n aght ta shiu jiu? How are you to-day?"

  The other old man was hale but shaky on his legs. He must have been in his eighties, too. White hair, a fresh face, thick set, with a large moustache. His skin was wrinkled like an old apple and his voice quavered a bit.

  Gurra-mie-a, Pazon. . . . Thanks, parson. Aw, middlin', I am. Very indifferin'. . . . Limpin' with the rheumaticks. . . . "

  Littlejohn stood at the gate smoking his pipe. It was like being in a foreign country. Two old men talking the old tongue of their boyhood.

  "Come here, Littlejohn. . . . This is William Joughin, the last of my boyhood friends. Billy-Bill-Illiam we called him then. Billy, son of Bill, the son of William. Aw, man! It's grand to put a sight on ye. . . . And what are you doing here all alone, William?"

  The ancient cupped his hand round his ear. He was a bit deaf. Parson Kinrade repeated it louder.

  "I thought ye'd have heard. . . . It's goin' round the houses at Peel all about it. I'm livin' with me daughter, Kirree. Her and her man, Tommy Keigh, bin farmin' here. We're leavin' the place."

  "I don't wonder, William."

  "Aw, poor hungry land it is, that'll ate up all the manure an' lime ye might be puttin' on it. Intack land, it is, torn from the moor and always strugglin' to get back to the wild. We're movin' to Ballaugh to-morrer. Ye're just in time, Cæsar. Are ye here on sick-visitin' ?"

  "Is somebody ill, then? Is your brother, Juan, still alive?"

  Billy-Bill-Illiam looked surprised.

  "Naw, Cæsar. Juan's dead these years. His body's gone to dust an' his keeigh gone to rust, as we used to say."

  "His keeigh . . . his plough, Littlejohn. That's a sad thought. Forgive two old men talking a language you don't understand. We haven't met for twenty years. Where's Kitty, William? Is it she's been ill?"

  "Aye. All the old folk is gone, but me. My vannaght lesh yn marroo, as we used to say . . . my blessings with the dead. Is it in you're wantin' ?"

  He indicated the door.

  "Yes. Is Kitty in?"

  "Kirree! Kirree!"

  The old man called his daughter in a shrill pipe. They could hear someone descending the stairs noisily, for the carpets were up. A striking woman in her early thirties appeared. Bright coppery hair, tall and slim, with blue eyes and a clear complexion. She was dead pale.

  "This is Cæsar Kinrade, Kirree, my boyhood friend and Archdeacon of Man, my gel. D'ye hear that, Archdeacon of Man."

  "I hear, daa. Pleased to meet you, sir, I'm sure."

  "And this is my friend, Mr. Littlejohn. . . ."

  "Pleased to meet you. It's a fine dog you've got there. Our Bess has moved over to Ballaugh with the stock."

  "Your husband's there now, Kitty?"

  "Yes. . . ."

  Her father corrected her.

  "He's gone to the lawyer. A terrible man for lawin' is Tommy Keigh. Takin' the law of everybody that's within reach of him. . . ."

  Kitty blushed and looked better for it.

  "He's on'y seein' to the lease. To hear my dad talk you'd think Tom was proper litigious."

  "Aren't all Manxmen? But that's not what we called for. Have you been ill, then, Kitty?"

  "She has, that. Terr'ble bad. Nearly died on us, didn' you, my chree?"

  "Not all that bad, daa."

  "You was. Nearly lyin' in the sheets, she was. . . ."

  The Archdeacon interpreted that to Littlejohn as lying in her shroud!

  "Oh! You'll get lave, dad! Have it your own way."

  Old Billy-Bill-Illiam was in his stride.

  "All but dead. An' her own doings, at that. Workin' too hard on this hungry land. Give herself a miscarriage, that's what. . . . "

  The girl fled indoors as Old William warmed up to details.

  "Now, in my young days, we'd soon have had her right. The wise woman would have bin givin' her the lucky herb, lek, or Charlie Chaise, the herb doctor, would 'ave come an' stopped the blood. But there doesn't seem to be no lucky herb around these days and the blood-stoppers is all dead."

  "Get on with your tale, William. What happened?"

  "Kirree was tuck bad at ten o' the mornin'. Liftin' the hay, she was . . ."

  "What date was this?"

  "Jus' a week after the great Lammas gales . . . the Gaalyn yn Lhuanys. It usually comes on the twelfth of August . . . this year it was two days behindhand, on the fourteen'. I recollect it plain, becos it blew the stones off the roof and Kirree lifted 'em back. 'You'll be injurin' yerself,' I told her, an' I was right, Cæsar, though it tuck a week to show."

  "She took bad on the 21st of August, William?"

  "That's right, pazon."

  Littlejohn and the Archdeacon exchanged glances.

  "And you sent for the doctor?"

  "We did. We was skeered, Cæsar, an' Kirree that modest, lek, not wantin' to be a trouble. Tommy tuck out the machine . . . that theer tractor . . . an' lek the wind to the telephone by Dalby. The doctor was here in half an hour. Kirree'd bin dead but for him. Aw man, the grand he was, Docther Fallows. . . . He's good all through, innagh an' gloo. . . ."

  "The warp and the weft of a man, you mean, William. Yes, I guess he must be. How long was he here?"

  "It's my half-holiday, says the docther, but I'll not leave her till she's safe. Ye see, pazon, he dursen't move her, else he'd have had her down in the 'ospital. Eleven o' the mornin' he was driving up the road there, and eight in the everin' leavin' us to go home. An' Kirree safe to us."

  "And he was here all that time, William? He didn't go back to Peel?"

  "For why? With the gel lyin' at death's door, do you think? Naw, Cæsar. He worked away and sat by her till one, an' then Tom gives him a collop of beef between two thi
ck slices o' bread, and a cuppa tea. Then, the docther walks round the yard like a man in a jarrood, a daze, lek, smokin' one cigarette afther another; then up to the bedroom again till three. 'Kirree,' he sez, then, 'Kirree, you'll be all right.' An' she was, but he didn' leave her till eight, when she fell asleep peaceable, lek. Three times he sent Tom down to Peel to the druggist's. . . . An' he came twice every day for three days and then once a day for a week. Then las' week, he says, 'Kirree, you won't need me any more. Off you go with your husbin' and yer daa to Ballaugh, an' if ye want childher to bless ye both with, don't be heavin' stones and things around when they're on the way. . . . '"

  Old William paused and then added in wonder:

  "An' all that paid-for by the gover'ment . . . free, lek, under the health service. Aw, a grand man is Docther Fallows."

  They drank a cup of tea with Kitty and the old man, ate a soda cake or two, and then left them.

  "Good luck at Ballaugh to ye both," said the parson by way of benediction.

  Old Billy-Bill-Illiam waved them out of sight.

  "I'll be purrin' a sight on ye, Cæsar. Come down to the port some everin' afther tay, an' we'll get a boat and have a li'l sail and a cooish about the old days agen. . . ."

  At the main road, Littlejohn drew up, filled his pipe and lit it.

  "I reckon I did all the talking, but then it came easier to me, a garrulous old man, and probably they told me more that way. It certainly gives Dr. Fallows an alibi till evening on August 21st. Do you think we ought to go and tell Perrick?"

  "Perhaps better not, sir, till we've something more concrete. What about tackling Fallows himself? Face him with the facts and see what he says?"

  "You know best. I'm an amateur, Littlejohn."

  "You wouldn't have thought so to hear you with Billy-Bill-Illiam! Why, he didn't even ask what you wanted to know for! It just came out in the course of conversation."

  "Ah! But when he gets quiet and thinks it out, he'll be bothered. His curiosity will grow till he can't bear to think about it and he'll make some excuse for seeing me, either at Grenaby or Peel, just to quiz me about things."

  They discussed Fallows.

  "I wonder, parson, if the doctor thinks his wife murdered Levis and he's trying to shield her. Remember, our report from Sylvester's says he was still devoted to her in spite of the way she behaved. He may not have faced her with his suspicions and simply be trying to draw the scent from her to him. When Perrick and I interviewed him, the doctor more or less told us to think what we damn well liked; he wasn't making a statement. I think I ought to have a good talk to Fallows and try to get him to tell a proper tale."