No Birds Sang

by John Buxton Hilton

  ‘He didn’t ring me. I didn’t answer the phone. Sid did. He give me the message.’

  ‘Which was?’

  Tommy looked first at Hedges, then back at Kenworthy. ‘That Darkie was to meet him, he knew where, that night at half-past-ten.’

  ‘I see. And did you deliver this message?’

  ‘There worn’t no harm in it that I could see.’

  ‘How did you deliver it?’

  ‘I told him, didn’t I?’ Tommy was perplexed. If he failed to grasp his first interpretation of a question, it did not occur to him to look for an alternative.

  ‘I mean how did you get hold of Darkie?’

  ‘I biked home that way, didn’t I, after Darkie got home from work.’

  ‘At your grandmother’s?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘And what did your grandmother have to say about it, when she heard the message?’

  ‘I got wrong.’

  A good old Norfolk idiom: succinct, unambiguous. Tommy, one gathered, was wearily resigned to getting wrong with people.

  ‘Why did you get wrong?’

  ‘She said Darkie hadn’t to have anything to do with it. She said it would bounce back on him.’

  ‘And did you get wrong with Darkie, too?’

  ‘Cause I shouldn’t have said about it in front of the old woman.’

  ‘But Darkie didn’t think it would bounce back?’

  Tommy raised a hand rocky with knuckles and let it fall again. ‘You know Darkie,’ he said.

  ‘I don’t, fortunately, a chance missed for ever, I’m afraid. So why was it going to bounce back, Tommy?’

  ‘Dunno.’

  The eternal negative. It was always a hell of a job trying to break a man who had no intelligence at all. To trap a man, you had to mislead him. But Tommy seemed unable to follow anywhere.

  ‘To do with something that had been buried, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Dunno,’ Tommy said.

  ‘You do: you know. You do know. Because you helped them bury it, Darkie and Sammy, the night the bomber nearly hit the Carvers’roof.’

  ‘That bloody near hit the church clock,’ Tommy said in a burst of sudden cheerfulness. Perhaps he was elated to be able to say something that was unlikely to be contradicted.

  Kenworthy grinned at him, ready to play, if necessary, ready to laugh like an imbecile at the incident, if it would help. ‘Did it now? Tell me about that. How near the church did it fly?’

  ‘Bloody near hit it,’ Tommy said.

  ‘And what were you doing while the plane was flying over?’

  ‘Well …’

  ‘Well, Tommy? You were digging, weren’t you?’

  ‘Not digging. We didn’t have to dig, did we?’

  ‘But burying something.’

  ‘That was Darkie’s idea.’

  ‘And what was it you were burying?’

  ‘He wouldn’t tell us.’

  ‘What sort of thing was it then? Gold bars? Jewels? Money?’

  ‘Dunno. Papers, like.’

  ‘What sort of papers? What were they in? A box? A suitcase?’

  ‘A bag. They were in a bag.’

  ‘What sort of a bag? A sack, you mean? A leather bag?’

  ‘Waterproof. Like the soldiers had. Sort of wallet.’

  ‘I see. And where did you bury this wallet? In the ground? Very deep?’

  ‘In the well.’

  ‘In the well? On a long cord, you mean? Or was the well dry?’

  ‘No. That was three parts full. That always is, isn’t it? They reckon there’s a spring down there. We had to take some bricks out of the side, then put them back when we’d finished.’

  Kenworthy took him over it all again, from several angles. How far down? Which side of the well, when you stood facing the cottage? Tommy was vague. If he did happen to know an answer, then he looked and behaved as if Kenworthy must be strangely lacking in reason not to know. If he didn’t know, as was more often the case, he looked offended to have been asked.

  ‘How often have you been to prison, Tommy?’

  ‘That’s a long time ago now, Mr Kenworthy.’

  And the unfairness of the question was too much for Hedges’ silence. ‘Can’t you leave that alone?’

  ‘How long ago, Tommy?’

  ‘Just after the war.’

  ‘What was it for?’

  Tommy blinked at him. It was even conceivable that he hardly knew. Certainly he wouldn’t be able to recite the charge. Kenworthy had seen them: so obsessed by the irrelevancies in their defence that they never fully understood what they were trying to refute. Charged with X, Tommy would be busy parrying Y and Z, which hadn’t been mentioned; pity the barrister who’d taken on a dock brief; only that poor sod had given up trying years ago. And some detective-constable or sergeant would have this chalked up as a success; it might even have been Derek.

  ‘How long did they give you, Tommy?’

  ‘Six months.’

  ‘Did you like it in there?’

  ‘That worn’t too bad. That worn’t as bad as I’d expected.’ And then he added, gratuitously but bitter, ‘That was all bloody Darkie’s fault.’

  ‘Oh, yes.’

  But another image crossed Tommy’s brain. ‘I seen that on the bags in the yard outside the kitchen,’ he said. ‘Grade Three Pig Meal. That was written on them. That was written on them bags. That’s what they made the porridge with. That’s why they call that doing porridge.’

  ‘One other question, Tommy. How was Darkie going to make his way, that night, to Yarrow Cross?’

  ‘I was going to have to take him, wasn’t I?’

  ‘I don’t know. Were you? How were you going to take him, Tommy?’

  ‘In the Austin Cambridge,’ Tommy said.

  ‘Bloody roll on!’ Hedges muttered.

  ‘I’ll be seeing you, Tommy.’ And Kenworthy took a last look at Hedges.

  ‘You, too, I wouldn’t be surprised.’

  Chapter Sixteen

  Emma Pascoe—interview aggressively?

  Kenworthy’s spirit failed him. He even doubted whether Elspeth had been right. It took a woman to know a woman. It also took a woman to go the whole hog the wrong way.

  Was this the personification of evil, these rags draped on the spindly bones, those eyes lurking behind the mummy’s skin? Or was she mad, unaccountable to reason, as Darkie knew no reason and Tommy knew very little?

  ‘If she were my case.’ Elspeth had said, ‘I’d—what is the phrase you use?—I’d lean on her. She’s sheltering behind her age, her decrepitude, but they’re no credit to her. They could happen to anyone. You’ve got to respect them. But does that mean you’ve got to excuse them, too?

  ‘I’d treat her rough. She won’t die. She won’t have a heart attack. Her body won’t fail her because of an emotional onslaught. Her emotions don’t work that way. She isn’t normal, Simon. She doesn’t move the way you and I do: from instinct to hope, from hope to motive, from motive to plan, and from plan to action.’

  ‘How does she move, then?’

  ‘From instinct to action.’

  ‘You said she was intelligent.’

  ‘She sometimes thinks up a clever plan. It’s more likely to mess up the action than advance it.’

  All very well. But there were disturbing elements of normality about Emma Pascoe that scuffed these theories at the edges. She had had an emotional shock; she had lost her cherished Darkie; and Kenworthy was reminded how far removed he was from his proper stance. He had no pity for the murdered man; only concern for the one who might be wrongly accused; and a stubborn temptation to be more interested in the motive than in the murder itself.

  Emma Pascoe started crying the moment she opened the door and saw who it was: not tears of self-pity nor a histrionic screen behind which to shape the interview to suit herself. Those sunken eyes were smarting with rage; rage because if it had been anyone but Darkie, they’d have made a national cause of it.

&nb
sp; Well, damn it, it was a national cause, wasn’t it? The Yard was here.

  But it was not possible to fool Emma Pascoe. She knew that they were thinking her instinct had taken her straight to an unalterable attitude. She looked at Derek with contempt; hardly looked at all at the W.P. sergeant, a blonde with film star cheeks and the inscrutability of routine duty. Emma Pascoe was prepared to deal only with Kenworthy.

  ‘Where’s the other lady?’

  ‘She’s on duty elsewhere today.’

  Emma Pascoe looked for a moment as if she considered herself robbed. ‘Well, have you got him yet?’

  ‘A man is helping us with our enquiries.’

  ‘Oh, aye? I’ve heard that before. You’re not meaning the airman?’

  It was as good a lead as any; Kenworthy let it develop.

  ‘He’s just a mug, Mr Londoner.’

  ‘Kenworthy.’

  ‘One who’d ought to have minded his own business. If he’d done that, none of this would have happened.’

  ‘You think not?’

  ‘Stands to sense, doesn’t it?’

  ‘Does it?’

  Derek was sitting with his face slightly tilted, expressionless. The W.P.S. looked as if she had no feelings on any matter. Kenworthy reflected that he hadn’t felt so affected by the possible reactions of his audience since he’d been an aide seconded from the beat.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I’m a stranger in these parts, still picking up the pieces.’

  ‘A pity you don’t go out to that other place. What is it they call it? Wiltshire?’ She knew the word well enough, of course. It was beneath her dignity to show familiarity with it. ‘Why don’t you go there and pick up some of the pieces that are lying about there?’

  ‘All in good time,’ Kenworthy said affably.

  ‘That’s where the other lady is, I’ll bet, in Wiltshire.’

  ‘As a matter of fact, she isn’t. She’s sitting by a hospital bed, a rather nasty road accident.’

  Emma Pascoe looked as if only a life-time of rubbing shoulders with the manners of the gentry saved her from spitting. ‘A fat lot of good that will do her.’

  ‘You are entitled to your opinion,’ Kenworthy said. ‘I happen to know the Prudhoes have been nowhere near Yarrow Cross for years.’

  ‘And since when have the Prudhoes done their own dirty work?’

  Ominously and irrationally, a spring clicked in the clock that had only an hour-hand. Emma Pascoe was wearing her dentures today. They were white, even; all the teeth looked the same size.

  ‘Robert Whittle’s been here.’ she said.

  ‘What, here to this house?’

  And Emma Pascoe laughed, a dry rattle that was a stark reminder both of her age and of Elspeth’s opinion of her. ‘The day Robert Whittle sets his foot on my garden path, there’ll likely be a murder that you won’t have to go crawling about amongst the heather for.’

  ‘Where and when, then?’ Kenworthy asked.

  ‘Two days ago. He stayed at the Wheatsheaf at Pitney All Saints, like he always does. Across the road from his own brother, his own family not being good enough for him. Yet all the same, they stick together, do the Whittles. You’ll get nothing out of them.’

  ‘Does Robert Whittle often come to Norfolk, then?’

  ‘Now and then. He wouldn’t be far out of sight if someone had told him that the airman was about.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘Well, what do you think?’

  So it had to be amiable wheedling after all, the sort of soft soap that would have made Elspeth look slightly sick.

  ‘I’m waiting for somebody to tell me.’

  ‘What, me do your work for you?’

  ‘It depends whether you want me to find out who killed Darkie.’

  Her eyes clouded; if there was anything genuine about her, it had been her love for that man.

  ‘So suppose,’ Kenworthy thought he was introducing just the right shade of astringency. ‘Suppose you save us an hour or two of work and start talking only about the things that matter.’

  ‘Darkie thought he could handle it all himself.’

  ‘Handle what himself?’

  ‘Haven’t you dug up that well yet?’

  ‘That well?’

  ‘Don’t crack on to me, Mr Londoner, you don’t know what I’m talking about. I lost my chance thirty years ago because Darkie thought he knew better than I did.’

  ‘Something hidden in the well,’ Kenworthy said, ‘that Darkie was going to give the airman.’

  ‘Give him?’ Again the cackle, without a touch of mirth of any sort.

  ‘Sell him, then.’

  ‘For thirty pieces of silver? The Prudhoes would have given me four hundred, five hundred, a thousand times that much. But it’s too late now. It was too late twenty years ago. I’ll tell you what, I’ve lived half my life on the expectations of that piece of paper. But all along I’ve known, deep down in here, that I’d never touch it.’

  Kenworthy began to see light. She was devious, she was dangerous, but she was vulnerable. She was a compulsive exhibitionist. It would be her undoing.

  She fell silent, wanting him to question her.

  ‘Blackmail,’ he said eventually. ‘That never came off.’

  ‘When you see that piece of paper, you’ll change your mind about a lot of things.’

  ‘That’s not how we handle blackmail. The one thing that we don’t allow to influence us, is what’s on the paper. We call the victim Mr X, and when it’s over, it’s forgotten.’

  ‘This won’t be.’

  ‘A piece of paper? Let’s think about that. Let’s try to remember some of the relevant dates, shall we? A scrap of typescript, a letter, a copy of a legal document, a chit, an estate order from the Prudhoes to their steward. I suppose it wasn’t Robert Whittle in those days? Showing the deal that old Prudhoe made with the War Office? Showing that he knew, back in 1941, that the villagers of Yarrow Cross would never come back to their native heath? Showing what he made on the deal?’

  And Emma Pascoe laughed again, but now it was pure glee. He had played straight into her hands. He had given her best. He had shown her how utterly wrong and lost he was. Derek had raised his eyes a little, was looking at him keenly, but with neither expectancy nor disappointment. The sergeant with the blonde sheen and the Palmolive cheeks sat totally impassive.

  What was it Derek had said, on the day of their very first drive through the forest? A suspect’s only got to keep his nerve, and he’s got you beat. Emma Pascoe wasn’t going to lose hers. She wasn’t normal. It was her nerve that set her apart. She was unbreakable. She was nourished by that piece of paper. For decades it had been the core of her being. Even now, until they dug it out and shook the loose earth from the folds of the wallet, it was hers. She would not be robbed in advance of that final moment.

  ‘You evil old bitch,’ Kenworthy said. He was towering over her. He knew that the rage was boiling out of his marrow. For a moment he felt dizzy with it, was sure that he was swaying on his feet, knew he had no hope of controlling himself. ‘You foul old woman.’

  Surely that woman sergeant must think he was going to hit her? ‘How much misery have you caused? And how much more of it do you think lies in your gift? What pride have you, except in your own power? And what power have you, except to ruin lives? What joy, except in seeing people suffer? What happiness have you left, except to wait for the next round of havoc?

  ‘I don’t know what this is about, Emma Pascoe, but I shall find out. You know I shall find out. You’re waiting for me to. And it won’t be anything I can put you in the dock for. You wouldn’t mind ending your days in prison, would you, anyway, if you thought you’d delivered up your precious piece of paper? But I’ll promise you this, Emma Pascoe: you’ll not have your way, I’ll see your rotten old bones out-live your chance to work evil.’

  She had stopped laughing and was looking at him now: not apprehensively, not curiously, not enquiring. In her way, the black
dots recessed in the folds of skin, she was staring him out.

  And it was true as Elspeth had forecast: his furious verbal assault had not even quickened her heart-beat. She was proof against intimidation because she was afraid of nothing.

  ‘Twice in a life-time,’ she said at last.

  ‘Yes: two chances. To do good or to do ill.’

  ‘You don’t know what you’re talking about.’ For seconds she continued to stare at him. Then Kenworthy took his eyes away from hers, not in defeat, not in scorn, but casually, relegating her to the limbo of those that did not matter.

  ‘Come away,’ he said to the others.

  She started to laugh again then, a dry, spiritless rattle, a senile slow hand-clap of a laugh. She was still laughing when they closed the front door behind them.

  For a long time in the car no one spoke. Derek concentrated on his driving and avoided looking at Kenworthy. The woman sergeant looked as if she could be trusted to remember nothing of what she had seen and heard. After a couple of miles Kenworthy leaned forward to the window.

  ‘Over there, look! Isn’t that a muntjak deer?’

  Chapter Seventeen

  There had been magic of a sort on Yarrow Cross Heath on each of Kenworthy’s previous visits; at least, a fallow mind could people the ruins with speculative figures. But tonight’s moonlight was ineffective. It fell on crumbled walls like a memory of de la Mare; but no man in the party, least of all Kenworthy, was in the mood for phantom listeners.

  For one thing, the party was too big. Kenworthy was determined that in the final revelation the group in the courtyard would be limited to the minimum of intimates: himself, Derek, Tabrett, perhaps the odd inspector from the Incident Force, if one was hovering. But in the initial stages it was a labour force that they wanted, and there had been no point in stinting it. Every able-bodied man who could be robbed of an off-duty shift had been mustered from local stations. Kenworthy had hurriedly drawn up the list of material equipment: spades, picks, flood-lights powered from Calor Gas cylinders. The cohort was noisy; he stamped irascibly on gossip and laughter; junior officers, anxious to impress him, were treating their men with unaccustomed curtness, exacerbated by the fact that men were working shoulder to shoulder who did not really know each other. Someone had suggested that there might be a contingency in which they would need a dog and one had been brought, no one now remembered why. It waited at its handler’s heel, panting, disciplined, ready and happy to turn nasty to order.