“Maybe. Was your mother sympathetic to him?”
“I think he had some hold over mother. She was always kind and polite to him, although she told me she could hardly bear the sight of him.”
“Was there something about Uncle Bernard in that?”
“I couldn’t say.”
“Were there letters from anybody else?”
“Yes. Trotman; written many years ago. They were extraordinary! If Trotman knew they still existed, he’d spend a sleepless night or two.”
“Why?”
“There was a letter he wrote after the whole story of my parentage came out. He must have been mad to write it. He says he has told his wife about his being my father and that she has forgiven him. He hopes Nick will take it the same way. He must have been out of his mind to write such a thing. My mother kept it. She kept all her letters...”
“We’d better get along to Beyle at once and see if they’re still there. The executors won’t be allowed to touch them until matters are cleared up, so the contents of the desk must still be intact. Come along.”
They took a waiting police car and went to Beyle.
The constable at the door saluted. He was there alone, save for Uncle Bernard, who was in his room, silent, presumably engaged in his curious researches.
“Anyone been here, constable?”
“The fingerprint men and Inspector Dyer, who’s taken over temporary from Superintendent Simpole...”
Littlejohn had already met Dyer, a rather self-effacing officer, not quite used to his new office, and now busy reading files and trying to take up the threads left by Simpole.
“Did the fingerprint men find anything?”
“No, sir. Whoever hid in the stairs, must have been careful. There wasn’t a thing ’cept a spot where he swep’ off the dust sittin’ on a chair there.”
“I think I’d better take a look at the hideout.”
Alec was eager to show him the place. It was little wonder he and Cromwell had missed it when they made their search after Kent’s death. There was no handle to the door and no lock. It simply swivelled when you pressed it in a certain spot and revealed a large, dark cavity. Alec touched a switch and a dim light went on. It was a junk room, used for storing garden odds and ends. Flower baskets, croquet tackle, an old tennis racket with broken strings...Hanging from nails on the walls were one or two antiquated photographs in cheap black frames. Groups taken on the lawn with men and women in old-fashioned summer clothes; a man in legal gown and wig, apparently Nicholas Crake himself; a beautiful woman standing beside an artificial marble pillar with a backcloth in the rear representing a Venetian scene...Dulcie Crake, years ago.
“Now, about the desk. Where is it, Alec?”
Young Crake looked gratefully at Littlejohn for the little touch of friendly familiarity.
“In here...”
A small morning-room, with a kind of glass terrace or sun-room outside the window. The place was simply furnished with easy chairs, a couch and a table with four chairs round it.
“We used to take meals in here in summer...”
In one corner stood a large mahogany secretaire, more a man’s piece than a woman’s.
“What about the key, sir?”
“I picked up the keys of the place, which Simpole collected, from the police office...”
Littlejohn paused.
Simpole collected...So the Superintendent had had access to the desk already if he’d wished. His own letters were reputed to be there.
Hastily Littlejohn took the ring from his pocket. It had been Dulcie Crake’s and bore a label: Mrs. Crake’s Keys. Alec looked over the Inspector’s shoulder.
“That’s the key. The one with the ornamented handle.”
Littlejohn selected the one indicated, a fancy object, almost a miniature of a ceremonial key to a cathedral. He inserted it in the top drawer, unlocked it, and tugged.
The whole inside was in a state of utter confusion. Someone had hastily rummaged the drawer, tearing open packets, opening boxes, searching in envelopes. It looked as if the intruder had inverted the drawer on the floor, ransacked it, taken away what he sought if it had been there, and then bundled the rest back, higgledy-piggledy, and locked it up again.
There were three drawers and each had been treated the same. Systematically looted and the remaining contents shoved in anyhow...
Littlejohn with a sigh decided that he’d better go through the contents of each again and settled down at the table with one after another of the drawers. There were photographs, books, booklets, circulars, pamphlets, ribbons, gloves, chocolates, sweets, lavender sachets, bottles of scent, handkerchiefs...A lot of keepsakes, a photograph album, souvenir pictures of home and foreign places...Nothing of any help in the two top drawers. In the third, bundles of letters, all carefully tied with ribbon. It was a tedious business going through them, especially as there was little hope of anything helpful there, seeing that the drawers had already been rifled. Alec gave a hand in the task, briefly commenting on the writers...
Many of the bundles contained one side of exchanges of correspondence with women friends, school companions, social climbers, members of the same clubs and nursing units, and even scandalmongers in the set which one time, according to Alec, had painted Tilsey red. Here and there, a few letters from an unknown man, letters showing what an impression the lovely Dulcie had made on men whose lives she had entered and then left, like a bright bird of passage. Some tokens of admiring homage, a declaration, a suggestion or two, a hope or a request, and then the letters ended. Littlejohn and Alec looked at each other as they finished reading the final letter in the last bundle.
...Your callous letter after all that has been between us disgusts me. That after all our love you should simply cast me off like an old shoe, fills me with despair. I shall never write to you again, nor see you again, for next week I leave for Australia. I curse the day I met you and hate all women because of you.
ROBIN SCREWSLER.
“That’s all, and a good finish,” said Alec, pushing back the final dramatic epistle.” I recollect my mother telling me Robin. Screwsler married a wealthy heiress a few months after that...”
“Well; that’s all. No letters from Trotman or Simpole. It looks as if Simpole got here first...Or could it have been Trotman?”
“The police have been here ever since my mother died, sir. I can’t see how Trotman could have got near them. Simpole, on the other hand, could come and go as he liked. It must have been he.”
“I’ll go through his private things later. Perhaps they will give us some idea.”
“Who else could it have been? Kent? He was after something when he called here the day he was killed. I wonder if in some way, Uncle Arthur did get to the desk. On the other hand, it might have been opened and ransacked before mother died.”
“That’s quite possible. One thing puzzles me. Why, in view of Trotman’s affair with your mother and your...Nicholas Crake’s...discovery of it, did they both still keep Trotman as their family lawyer?”
“I think it was for Uncle Arthur’s sake. He was Trotman’s partner, you know. Nick was very fond of Auntie Bee. Besides, Nick had no malice in him. He’d never think of chalking-off Trotman for spite...”
“I’ll just go and see Uncle Bernard about all this. Perhaps he knows about the letters...”
Littlejohn smiled to himself at the way he had slipped into the Crake family circle. Alec by his Christian name, and Old Doane had become Uncle Bernard to him!
Alec followed him upstairs and there they found Bernard sitting by the large fire reading one of his ancient calf-bound volumes. Whatever went on at Beyle, Uncle Bernard hung on like a faithful dog. Murder, theft, scandal, all passed him by. He was too busy with his own affairs to worry much about other people’s. He greeted them calmly and laid his volume aside.
“Still investigating, Inspector?”
“Still investigating...”
“Any nearer a solution?”
“Yes, most unfortunate. A strange man, Inspector, but a sound one.”
“Why didn’t you tell me, sir, that your sister took drugs and that you supplied them? Instead, you concocted a cock-and-bull story about tarantulas and dancing mania...”
Uncle Bernard looked hastily at Alec who met his glance with a sneer. The old man fumbled about, turned his head as though seeking a solution from different parts of the room, and finally started to blurt excuses.
“She was my sister...I didn’t want anyone to know she took morphia...it seemed so disgraceful to the world, whereas to me, it was sad...very sad...”
“I appreciate your sympathy and brotherly solicitude, but they don’t come very well from one who started my mother on the road to physical and moral ruin. You made her a drug addict when you arrived here. You wanted to make yourself indispensable to her, so you caught her in the net of your own evil desires...”
“Alec, I am an old man and perhaps not a very good one, but I am hardly as bad as that. Your mother contracted the habit during an illness when a foolish family doctor used a drug which ought never to have been given to a highly-strung, high-spirited woman. I was not responsible. I did all I could. The dancing was to restore the rhythm of her troubled nerves and help her break the habit. After a bout, she was unstrung and I used the old Spanish cure...”
“I don’t want to hear any more of your glib-tongued lies. You have the ability to worm yourself out of anything with your tongue. I despise you; I loathe you...I’ll see to it that you get out of Beyle and stay out as soon as things here are settled.”
“Nita has already offered me a home with her, Alec. I don’t see how you can interfere...”
Old Doane seemed quite unrepentant. Littlejohn got the idea that, like the rest of the family, he lived in a fantastic world of his own creating, a refuge from reality. Uncle Bernard was to stay on at Beyle; that was all that mattered to him. It was all that had ever mattered to him, and he would do anything to remain there.
“Mrs. Crake’s desk has been rifled and her private papers gone through and many of them stolen. Do you know anything about it, Dr. Doane?”
“I...? Why should I? I never interfered in the private affairs of my sister. They were no concern of mine and she had nothing in her desk of the least interest to me.”
“You haven’t answered the question, sir.”
“Very well. I have never interfered with my sister’s papers or opened her desk. I hope that suffices.”
They were interrupted by the constable on guard. A telephone call from Cromwell at police headquarters in Tilsey. Littlejohn hurried downstairs, leaving Alec and the old man together, silently hating one another.
“Our people have just had a ’phone call from Spain. Quick work,” said Cromwell. “Bernard Doane was a student of medicine at Madrid, but left before he qualified. He took up music and made a failure of that, too. He was in a mental home for a time. The Spanish police had the news on the files, because he tried to kill the conductor of the orchestra which was playing when he forgot his piece. He was in the home for two years; then the family took him out. He disappeared suddenly twenty years ago. They don’t know what he did for a living after he left the home. They’re still working on it and will let us know more later.”
“Thanks, old chap. That’s very useful. I wonder how many more theories we’ll be able to concoct out of this case. Now, it’s complicated by homicidal maniacs!”
Twelve - Elspeth
LITTLEJOHN had to go to Oddington to see Elspeth; she was never at Beyle when he happened to be there, but flitted to and fro, like a wraith, tidying up the rooms in which anybody was living, laying the table, making a stew or a rice pudding, and then scuttering back to her sister’s before anyone could stop her. She was torn between duty to the family and fear of the house and had found a compromise to suit herself. There were four buses a day to Oddington and back from Tilsey and Elspeth was on every one, either rushing into town to buy-in for the family, or hurrying to and from the house to do some job or other. She had packed her things, cleared her room, and emigrated from Beyle, but some twitch of conscience impelled her to continue working there.
Oddington is a small place with about a score of cottages, a church, a smithy, Shelldrake’s pub, the manor, the vicarage, and about a dozen farms within the rural boundary. Elspeth’s sister lived in a tumble-down small-holding, the last in the village. Her husband had been a farm-hand and, after his death, his wife had carried on the house and taken in a marshy field to rear poultry. The gate was falling off and Littlejohn had a struggle to get in. The path was muddy and a lot of old hens, geese and a solitary turkey were foraging miserably in the wet earth. Half a dozen ducks marched past in single file, a hen cackled and flew out of a dilapidated cote. There was a cart-shed and neglected stable, as well, with a pair of rotten shafts visible inside.
A large woman with dropsical ankles and red-rimmed eyes emerged from a shed carrying a hen, head downwards, by the legs. She thrust it in a wire coop among a lot of other broody ones and waddled towards Littlejohn. In spite of the cold wind, the sleeves of her rough blue blouse were rolled up to the elbows, revealing swollen, mottled arms, purple with cold. Her hair was rough from the wind and she wore a man’s cloth cap.
“Yes?”
She closed her eyes, screwing them up as she did so, as if to clear the vision.
“Is Elspeth in?”
“What do you want?”
It was a flat, stupid, almost animal face, marked with hard work, suffering, greed and bitter disappointment.
“I’m from the police. I want a word with her about Beyle.”
The woman shied off. She had all the countrywoman’s antipathy for town police. All she asked was to be left alone and sell her eggs at a copper or two more than the regulation price.
“I’ll see...”
There was whispering inside and then Elspeth appeared at the door. She was wearing outdoor garments ready for another of her interminable excursions. A little dried-up woman, quite unlike her sister, with a purple birthmark the size of a shilling on her right cheek. She didn’t invite Littlejohn in.
“Did you want me?”
Whereas her sister had no religion at all, Elspeth derived great consolation from attending a local spiritualist circle. She frequently participated in séances. She was respected among her intimates. This gave her more self-possession than her sister.
“You’ll have to be quick. I’ve to catch the bus to town.”
“I’ll drive you there in my car when I’ve asked you a few questions. You’d better come along and sit inside now while I question you. It’s perishing in this wind.”
Elspeth gave him a look of triumph. Even the police were not, it seemed, immune from human frailty.
“I’m goin’, Mary Ellen,” Elspeth shouted indoors. There was no reply, but the curtain of the side window was slightly drawn aside and the red-rimmed eyes watched them off.
Littlejohn opened the door of the police car and helped the old woman in. She took a long time, fussing and fumbling and settling herself.
“How long have you been at Beyle? By the way, I don’t know your second name, Elspeth.”
“Elspeth Sly. Mary Ellen’s my half-sister. We had the same father, but a different mother. I’m a natural child, but father’s wife said she’d let me live with the rest. One more among eight didn’t matter much, she said.”
Funny things happened in the remote country, but Littlejohn wondered why Elspeth had volunteered the information. He soon knew.
“People said my mother was a lady. My father’s wife was a hawker, sold clothes-pegs from door to door when he married her. My mother was different.”
She was producing her credentials and excusing, maybe, her half-sister for not being quite like she was herself. She wore a moulting fur coat, probably a gift from somebody at Beyle in the dim past, a little black hat, and
black kid gloves.
“How long have you been at Beyle?”
“Fifty years...More...I went there as kitchen-maid at twelve and now I’m sixty-three. I can’t get used to not working there. I can’t keep away. But I swore I’d not sleep there another night after the master was took and I won’t.”
She started to weep silently. She seemed utterly bewildered. Littlejohn waited until she was composed again.
“Mr. Crake would be a little boy then.”
“Yes. He was about my age. He was away at school. Beyle was a nice place then. Seven servants indoors and four out. The gardens was lovely and the inside spotless. Mr. Wanless was butler. We was happy then.”
“You remember Mr. Nicholas bringing home his wife”
Her face grew like a mask.
“Yes.”
“Were they happy?”
“Yes, at first.”
“What started all the trouble, Elspeth?”
“She was always a wild one. She couldn’t stay at home like other wives, while Mr. Nick was at work. She had to be gaddin’ about bein’ entertained. And she sought some of the worst company in Tilsey to do it with.”
“Are there any of the old company left now?”
“That Alkenet...Squire Alkenet. He ought to have died with his broken neck. And the Trotmans. That’s all left now.”
A woman passing, clad in black from head to foot like a cockroach, peered in the car, met Elspeth’s glaring eyes and recoiled.
“Nosy Parker! That’s what she is. Nothin’ happens in this village without...”
“Mr. and Mrs. Crake were estranged. From when?”
“Roughly when Mr. Bernard came here for a holiday and stayed for good. I always said nothin’ good would come of his bein’ there. And I was right.”
“Did you know Mrs. Crake took drugs?”
“Yes. On and off, she did. She tried hard to stop it. Sometimes she’d go without for months. Then she’d break out again.”
Crime In Leper's Hollow Page 15