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

by George Bellairs

  The gale had not abated in the night. The promenade at Peel was awash. Great seas driven by the wind split at the breakwater, which at a distance in the early light seemed like a mighty circular saw cutting wood and casting a spray of sawdust high in the air and along each side. Waves crashed and slapped on the quays and you couldn't keep your feet unless you clung to the walls. The boats tied up in the harbour beat themselves against the stone sides and against one another. You forgot you were on dry land and seemed to be struggling in an inferno of boiling water.

  Nobody but the very young and the very old slept in Peel that night. The pubs on the seafront were open till dawn and relays of men came and went, drying themselves a bit, warming themselves before the fires, taking refreshment, drinking coffee generously laced with rum, thawing out their stiff oilskins. . . . The old ones told the young ones about past disasters.

  "I'd a' been aboard her myself if it hadn' been for a premonition. . . ."

  A long tale of lost ships and the warnings and supernatural signs which had resulted in the teller surviving to give a full account.

  At five o'clock the telephone rang from Port Erin. The three lifeboats were back. . . .

  The news seemed to spread all over the place without anybody telling it.

  From the far end of the breakwater, men began to run back to town, gathering up their comrades on the way. It was like a small army on the march when it reached the Captain Quilliam; the young men trying to run in the teeth of the weather; the older ones moving at a steady pace which covered the ground just as quickly.

  The police had telephoned a list of names to the landlord and he stood behind the counter reading them out. Whenever a fresh batch of newcomers entered, he read them all again. For the most part, it was double-Dutch; Breton names which the landlord couldn't pronounce. Two lives had been lost on the Robert Surcouf; the skipper and a passenger. Camus had refused to leave his ship and gone down with her.

  "A passenger . . . ?"

  The word was passed from mouth to mouth.

  "Who was it? We didn't know nawthen about no passenger?"

  The landlord couldn't help. The name wasn't given by the police.

  Four of the Frenchmen had been rushed to hospital in Douglas; three with broken ribs and another with suspected fracture of the skull. The audience nodded. Little emotion; just relief that men had been saved. The Robert Surcouf crew had been a queer lot. Full of the joy of life for a day or two; then morose, sulky, even quarrelsome, as though a sort of curse or evil eye had descended on their ship. They'd taken their moods from the skipper and he had been like a man with a load on his conscience for many days.

  "What about the lifeboats?"

  "They're all right. . . . One casualty. . . ."

  The landlord said it as though he hoped it would be contradicted; that somebody would suddenly declare it had been a mistake and all the crews had returned safely.

  There was dead silence.

  "It was Sid Perrick. . . ."

  "Aw. . . ."

  Just that. . . . "Aw." . . . The Manx interjection into which, according to inflexion, is poured joy, hope, relief, sorrow or grief.

  "He was drowned. . . . It seems that lad, Jean . . . the one with the melodion, you know, got hysterics and as they was takin' him in the lifeboat, had a sort of fit and fell in the water. They thought they'd lost him. . . . Then Perrick dived after him, brought him in, shoved him over the side of the boat. . . . "

  The men hung on the landlord's words, one after another removing caps, sou'-westers and berets, hanging their heads as though already at Perrick's graveside.

  " . . . Just then a wave broke over the boat. . . . They saw Perrick for a minute. . . . Then he was gone. . . ."

  "Aw. . . ."

  Littlejohn and Cromwell, crushed against the wall of the bar, heard it all. They had turned over Fallows to one of his medical colleagues, who'd given him a sedative and taken him to his own home in the town for food and rest.

  Littlejohn bit hard on the stem of his pipe. It didn't seem like the same place without Perrick around. Even now, you somehow expected the crowd to part, and the sturdy, bustling form of the man in the raincoat to force its way through, smiling and efficient, ready to take over. . . .

  "Tom Cashen and the crew are on their way home by bus. They'll have to go back and bring the boat. Somethin's wrong with the engine and it'll take an hour or two to get her seaworthy again."

  Outside, the rain had ceased and the wind was abating. A few adventurous spirits were out, inspecting the night's wreckage, and news from other parts was circulating fast.

  A wreck off Maughold Head; ships in distress in the Channel and the Ramsey and Douglas lifeboats out all night; and Castletown promenade wrecked again and all the houses along it flooded. . . . To crown all, the Steam Packet boat from Liverpool, fifteen hours on the way instead of four. The daylight revealed, too, a large Irish cargo-boat, which had crept in Peel for shelter in the dark. Tied up beside the crowd of soiled and weather-beaten fishing-vessels and coasters, she looked mawkish and out of her element, like a stately, self-conscious hen, mothering a lot of unruly ducklings.

  The Peel lifeboatmen were in before nine. They were due in Port Erin again to bring back the boat at noon, but after the night's inferno they felt like a meal at home, a sight of their families, talk with friends, a look at the home town. . . .

  "It was at the Mooir ny Fuill we let up with 'em," the skipper reported to the police. They'd asked him to call at the police-station where Littlejohn and Cromwell were having breakfast.

  ". . . Funny enough, the screw had held and the engines was awright; it was the steerin' gone . . . she wouldn' answer her helm. Roun' and roun' in circles, lek . . . an' shippin' wather fast. Camus was in the wheelhouse, swearin' in French like all hell, an' he'd barricaded himself in and wouldn' come out. We tuck off the crew. All three lifeboats was there, but it wasn' easy."

  "What about the passenger?"

  The skipper grew silent.

  "None of us'll forget that for many a long day. We didn' know there was a woman aboard. We knew how many crew and worked accordin'. We couldn' hear one another speak, lek, in the noise and tuck off the men one by one, havin' got a rope across. Then the mate, Donny-dew, appears with someborry across his shouldhers. We turns the searchlight on him and we see he's carryin' what looks like a woman. . . . An' of a sudden she starts to struggle. He puts her on her feet an' tries to tell her to mount his back, and he'll tek her with him across the rope. Instead, she looks round, wild lek, loses her hold of him, and a wave breaks over her and she's gone. She didn' seem to want to be rescued. . . ."

  Tom Cashen beat the table with his fists, a burst of emotion quite out of keeping with his calm temperament.

  "It was Mrs. Dr. Fallows. . . . What she was doin' aboard the Frenchy, I don' know. Who put her aboard and what was she doin' there on a night lek las' night? Bad enough the mad French skipper takin' out his ship and crew and not only riskin' them but emperillin' my men as well. What was Mrs. Fallows doin' aboard? Had she been kidnapped or someth'n'?"

  "No, Tom. It'll all come out in time. It was to do with the murder of Levis. . . ."

  "She did it?"

  "I believe so."

  Littlejohn paused.

  "Yes. She must have been trying to get out of the country to avoid arrest. That's why Perrick went out with you. He was going to bring her back."

  Cromwell's head slowly rose from his plate. He turned to Littlejohn with admiration in his eyes. Perrick had messed-up Littlejohn's case, but the Chief Inspector was going to let him finish with honour. Last night's events had washed clean the slate.

  "Aw, Perrick. A brave man. One of the best. As long as the men in that lifeboat lasts, they'll talk of what he did las' night. An' all the young Frenchy's botherin' about now, is that his blasted accordion went down with the ship. . . ."

  21

  THE SILENCE IS BROKEN

  THEY had barely finished breakfast when the t
elephone rang from Noble's Hospital to say that Archdeacon Kinrade was there and wanting to speak with Littlejohn.

  At midnight, the telephone wires at Grenaby were blown down and as Littlejohn had taken the car away, the vicar and Mrs. Littlejohn had waited without news all night. Then, about eight o'clock, a police car had arrived from Douglas to say that Ned Crowe had been asking for the parson and would he come right away?

  Archdeacon Kinrade had found Ned Crowe in a state of high excitement and anxiety. The casualties from the Robert Surcouf had been brought in and had given a full account of the disaster to some of the nurses who could speak French. It had travelled from ward to ward, and Ned Crowe had heard of the deaths of Perrick and the mysterious woman passenger, Pamela Fallows. He had thereupon begun to shout for Archdeacon Kinrade and nothing would pacify him but a promise to bring the parson right away.

  "You're not going to die, man. Hold your peace," they'd told Crowe, but he wouldn't rest until they did as he demanded.

  When the Archdeacon arrived Ned Crowe began to pour out a long tale.

  "I've had it on me conscience all this time, pazon, and maybe if I'd told it before, last night's shipwreck an' loss of life would have been pervented. I can't bear it on me mind a minyute longer. . . ."

  And what he told the Archdeacon sent the good man scurrying to the nearest telephone.

  "You'd better tell that to my friend, the Chief Inspector. . . ."

  "Will that mean I's be sent to jail, pazon?"

  "Now don't be silly, Ned. . . ."

  Ned Crowe looked a lot better when Littlejohn arrived in his ward. Relieving himself of his tale to the vicar had done more than any amount of medicine, and now he was anxious to make his peace with the police and go home to Margat and his farm.

  "I din' do it deliberate, sir. What Mr. Perrick told me skeered me, lek. . . . When everybody kep' askin' me things and he kep' advisin' me to keep quiet till he said it was right, I got bewuldered. . . . I tuck to the dhrink . . . an' then I met with me accident. If I hadn' been so keen on the dhrink, it would never have happened. . . . "

  "Tell it in your own way, Mr. Crowe, and take your time."

  They gave Ned a drink of orange-juice to encourage him. Cromwell took down his statement in a mixture of shorthand and scribble which he had invented himself.

  "I wanted to say, an' I've already told Mr. Kinrade, I saw Mr. Levis get himself killed that afternoon at Gob y Deigan. If someborry else hadn' done it, I might have done it meself. . . ."

  Ned Crowe raised himself in his bed and thumped the counterpane for emphasis.

  "My gel, Margat, had met Levis somewhere and was all excited-up on account of him. He used to take her out in his car and gave her ideas quite above her, lek. I was bothered about it and I asked people about Levis. They said he was a bad 'un and his ways with women wouldn' bear thinkin' of. That was enough for me. I told Margat she hadn' to see him again. . . ."

  "But she did."

  "Aw, yes, she did. I went the wrong way about it. A man shouldn' tell women they're not to do things, nor yet that the man they fancy's all wrong. That makes 'em want the fellah all the more. Instead of doin' it open, after that, Margat starts seein' Levis underhand, an' one day she tells me he wants to marry her an' she's agreed."

  The very thought of it depressed Ned Crowe and they had to give him more orange-juice to pull him together.

  "I said I'd never agree and rather than that, I'd lock her in her room till she came to her senses. You see, sirs, it was said that Levis had a wife over in England. In any case, I wasn't havin' my gel wed to a fellah like that . . . a man as has lived sinfully with more women than he could count. . . . An' for the first time, Margat turned on me . . . turned on her father, and said she wouldn' obey me. She packed a bag an' went off to London without sayin' why or where. She left behin' her a paper with trains and the lek, train an' boat times to get to foreign parts, and it came to me that she was runnin' away with Levis. My pride tuck it so hard, that I thought she could go her own sinful way, an' I got dhrunk off some rum in the house. . . . "

  Crowe looked anxiously around. "Margat's all right, isn' she?" As though he couldn't believe she was home again and his nightmare over.

  ''Yes, Ned. She's at the Kellys', safe and sound."

  "Thank God! The nex' day, as I was still wonderin' what to do, I looks up from some job or other in the farmyard, an' there I see Levis walkin' down the glen to Gob y Deigan. So he's not gone off with my gel, I thinks, and I makes afther him with murdher in my heart. I crossed the field to the edge of the cliffs, and I looks down, lek, to see where he is. There's another woman there with him. I seen her around Peel . . . a docthor's wife called Fallows, an' people had told me Levis was once knockin' about with 'er, like he'd been with my Margat. . . . "

  Through the glass panels of the door, they could see an orderly and a nurse wheeling a trolley on which a patient was lying on his way to an operating session. Crowe followed it with his eyes alive with enthusiasm, a member of a small community of the sick and interested in every detail of what went on.

  "They done grand for me here, pazon. I couldn' have wished for better treatment if I'd been the Governor himself. . . . "

  "Go on with your tale, Ned."

  "I lied down on me all-fours an' watched what was goin' on between Levis an' the woman. She seemed to be pleadin' for some thin' and Levis jes' laughing, lek. All of a sudden, Levis grabs her and starts kissin' her, and her strugglin' to get away. The more she struggles, the more excited an' lustful he seems to get, till in the end, it looks as if he's goin' to have his way with her. She goes quiet an' stops strugglin', and gives-in. . . . She even sits down on the stones, pantin' after the rough handlin' she's had, and Levis sits by her and teks a hold of her and his hands go all over her. . . ."

  Crowe's eyes bulged as he saw events again in imagination.

  "Then, of a sudden, she ups with a rock she's picked up, and hits him hard on the head. He tries to defend himself, and that rouses her proper. She hits him over an' over agen, till he's lied there dead . . . . Or that's how it seemed to me. Then the woman ups and runs as fast as she can hare it, up the glen an' away in the car she's come in. I didn' know what to do. I couldn' think of the body lyin' there untended for me to see every time I crossed my land. . . ."

  Crowe was getting tired and faltering in his speech.

  "Tell us briefly what happened next, Mr. Crowe. . . ."

  "I'd alwis been friendly, lek, with Sid Perrick. He was once policeman at Michael, an' was rare and good to Margat when she went to school there. He'd bring her home at times when the roads was busy with charabancs and the lek. I can see her now, sittin' on his bicycle an' Sid Perrick pushin' her along. . . . Well, I went to the telephone, an' I asked Sid Perrick to come right away an' see me. He come an' tuck it rare an' bad when I'd told him my tale. I never see a man so upset. It might have been his own brother got killed.

  " 'With your Margat consarned and run away from you because of Levis,' he tells me, 'it might look black for you, Ned, if the body was found on your land. There's only your word for it that someborry else did it, an' the best thing is to keep quiet till I've cleared things up. No matter who asks you, you're not to tell a thing about Levis, Margat or Mrs. Fallows unless I say so.' That's what Sid Perrick said. Then we go down to the shore, hide the body in one of the Lynague Caves, an' afther dusk we fill up the trousers with stones, tie them at the bottom, an' row out far to sea and drop it. An' there it would be to this day an' noborry the wiser, but for Tom Cashen findin' it when afther his tanrogans. It was lek the will of God seekin' out wrongdoin'. It hit me so bad that I tuck to the dhrink to forget it all. . . . "

  "There was Levis's car. What happened to it?"

  "Mr. Perrick took it; I think he hid it in the old Foxdale mine workin's."

  "And that's all, Ned?"

  "Should there be some more? I'd have thought it was quite enough for one man, pazon!"

  "What did you think when Johnny Cor
teen was arrested for the crime you knew he'd not committed, Mr. Crowe?"

  "I told Mr. Perrick I couldn' be silent if another was to suffer. He said to hold my peace, lek, an' no harm would come to Johnny. An' it didn', did it? If no harm came to anyborry, I wasn' goin' to see anyborry suffer for the likes o' Levis. A right bad lot. An' Mrs. Fallows only, in a manner o' speakin', defendin' herself against him. Though it might 'ave been said I killed him because of Margat. I still think Sid Perrick was right about that. . . ."

  The gale blew itself out in the course of the day. Littlejohn, Cromwell and Archdeacon Kinrade were in Peel when, late in the afternoon, the lifeboat arrived home. There was a considerable crowd in the Captain Quilliam later on. The Breton sailors had been brought to Peel, and without Captain Camus were a lot more sociable. In spite of the fact that they'd lost most of their gear on the Robert Surcouf, they insisted on standing rounds of drinks for the men who had saved their lives. Only the mate, Donadieu, remained morose. He kept thinking of his lost share of the £500 which had induced Captain Camus to take aboard the woman passenger and put to sea in a gale. Half a million francs! And Camus had insisted on going down with his ship and the money next to his skin! Donadieu was so helplessly drunk at closing-time, that his men hadn't the nerve to take him to a lodging-house for the night. They bedded him down in the hold of the Ernest Renan, from Tréguier, which had tied-up for shelter in the harbour and was taking the crew back to St. Malo as soon as the casualties could travel. . . .

  Littlejohn and Cromwell had parked the Archdeacon with the car during their visit to the Captain Quilliam.

  "Dr. Lennox spotted me here," said the vicar, when they returned. "He says he'd like to see you at his home, Littlejohn, before we go back. Fallows is staying with him. His place is on the Patrick Road. . . . "

  Dr. Lennox, another general practitioner in Peel, and his wife had befriended Fallows. Littlejohn found him with them.

  "You'll find him quite himself. I've given him a few shots of sedative, but he's able to talk about things and seems anxious to see you, Chief Inspector. Don't push him too hard. . . . "