The Body in the Beck

by Joanna Cannan

  Price’s heart turned over. ‘You won’t gain much by that, sir. I was only doing my duty. In a case of murder, every responsible citizen . . .’

  ‘I’ve no time for your fallacies. Shut up and clear off. You defile this beautiful place,’ said Dr Muswell.

  He turned and shuffled rapidly to his rooms. The outer door shut with a heavy thud. A bolt shot home.

  ‘Now look wot you done, Inspector,’ said Beestraw. ‘You bin and gawn and lost me me job.’

  Price said, ‘The man’s in his second childhood. Surely you don’t believe in his threats? He hasn’t the wits to dial a local number, much less to telephone to Athens — it’s in Greece.’

  ‘You don’t know the old devils. They’re figures of fun orl right, and to an outsider they may seem as scatty as squirrels, but if it suits them they can be as sane as you or me.’

  Price said, ‘No one can blame you for assisting the police in their duties. In any case, thanks to our present Government, there’s no unemployment. You’d be better off doing productive work in a factory than licking the boots of these old molluscs.’

  Beestraw whined, ‘Factory work don’t suit me on account of me weak chest.’ His chest was perfect, but he was thinking of his pickings: Francis’s cigarettes and handkerchiefs, Professor Evans’s peppermints, Dr Muswell’s stamps and sixpences, the margarine and lard, the meat and tea and sugar that his young brother-in-law passed to him from the kitchens. Throughout the University the honesty of college servants was traditional, and where honesty is taken for granted, it is child’s play to steal.

  ‘Well, there’s plenty of other work, food-production and so on,’ said Price impatiently. ‘I’ll give you my personal assurance that you won’t suffer in any way.’

  ‘Wot’s the good of that? Muswell may get you the sack as well as me.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ said Price. ‘Do you think an Assistant Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police would listen to an old rag-bag who’s been walled up in a place like this for years?’ They were halfway across the gardens and he turned and looked back at the group of buildings — the Fellow’s Building, urbane among the cedars, the great Decorated west window of the Chapel, the buttresses of the fourteenth-century Hall, and as he considered these outmoded, unworkable and insanitary edifices, all the bells of Oxford gathered themselves together and told the hour. Suddenly and fleetingly he felt rather than thought that he was leaving a fortress beleaguered but impregnable, the fortress of man’s spirit, garrisoned by that whipping-boy of the century, the uncommon man.

  He said, ‘I’d be glad to get out of it if I were you, Beestraw. It gets me down . . .’

  Chapter Six – Bird’s-Eye View

  By ten o’clock Price had from her photographers the name and address of Lady Nollis, Nollis Castle, near Oxford. He felt a curious disinclination to revisit that somehow disturbing city and was relieved to hear that the village of Nollis-in-the-Water lay eight miles to the west of it, with a poor bus service, so that he felt fully justified in asking for the use of a police car.

  An appointment had been by telephone for twelve o’clock and, as the car passed over the drawbridge, Price checked the time and found it lacked precisely five seconds to the hour. Within the high crumbling walls of the castle courtyard the car swept round a circle of grass and drew up at the entrance of a Tudor building adjoining one of the original Norman towers. ‘Looks more like a jail than an ’ome,’ remarked the driver.

  ‘These walls should be pulled down and the material utilized in the building programme,’ replied Price as he stood waiting in the sunshine at the open door.

  For a few minutes nothing happened or seemed likely to happen. Somewhere doves were cooing; on a low wall at the end of the house a peacock spread his tail. Except on fire-screens and tea-cosies, Price had never seen a peacock, and he was looking at it in astonishment and wondering if it might fly at him (he had once been chased by a goose), when from the interior of the house an Irish wolfhound advanced towards him, bowing and smiling with all the grace of a well-trained Edwardian hostess. Price, uttering a sound of fear, dashed for the car, but, turning to look behind him, saw a young manservant, who had the hound by the collar and an impudent grin on his face.

  ‘Is he harmless?’ asked Price, coming to a standstill.

  ‘She is a perfect lady, sir,’ said the man with a broader grin.

  ‘She doesn’t look it. Keep her under control, please,’ said Price and then, ‘I have an appointment with Lady Nollis at twelve noon.’

  ‘Will you come in, sir? Her ladyship is out riding, but she will be back at any moment now.’

  After a considerable walk through panelled corridors and then stone corridors, Price found himself in a small room which, from the number of sporting trophies, he supposed was Lord Nollis’s den. However, in the tedium of waiting twenty minutes for Harriet, he examined the silver cups on the chimney-piece and, finding they had been awarded to Harriet d’Arcy for Juvenile Jumping, Handy Hunter Competitions, Pony Club Hunter Trials, he came to the conclusion that this was the modern version of a lady’s boudoir. Inspecting the books, jumbled rather than arranged along the white bookshelves, he read that I wanted a Pony, They Bought Her a Pony, Six Ponies, and Plenty of Ponies were the property of Harriet d’Arcy, but The Ascent of Chowolunga was inscribed in a handwriting he remembered from yesterday, to Harriet Nollis from her obliged servant the author and from its pages fell a small crumpled snapshot of Worthington unbecomingly bearded outside a tent pitched on a slope of snow. Pencilled on the back was Chowolunga Camp III. On the title page of The Age of Faith, by F.E. Worthington, the author’s name was scratched out and replaced by his signature and the words, l’homage d’ auteur. The Spirit of Man and The Oxford Book of English Verse wished H. V. N. a happy Christmas from F. E. W. and fancy! what a coincidence and how small the world was — on H’s birthday F. had presented her with As for These Others, by Barbara Sallust . . . tch, tch . . . a tricky case that, but he’d solved it in the end. He dipped into the book, which was illustrated in black and white, dealt with dogs and cats and didn’t seem worth fifteen shillings, and when quick footsteps outside the room caused him hastily to replace it, he thrust his hands into his pockets, walked to the window and was admiring the view of a water and willow valley as Harriet Nollis came in.

  Small and slight, dressed in jodphurs, a white shirt and a crash cap, Harriet looked neither like a wife nor a countess; in fact Price wondered if she were Lady Nollis’s daughter and said, ‘Have I the pleasure of addressing Lady Nollis?’ very tentatively.

  ‘Yes. Detective Inspector Price, isn’t it? I’m sorry you’ve been waiting. My silly young horse stuck at some pigs. I do apologize.’ In spite of her youthful looks, her manner was assured and easy, and the small heart-shaped face under the dark curls, released when she dragged off her crash-cap, showed none of the nervousness he was accustomed to see even on the faces of the innocent. ‘Now what can I do for you?’ she asked, for all the world, as though she expected him to beg for a contribution to the Police Orphanage.

  He said, ‘We are making some routine enquiries about a man named Reginald Hawkins. Does that name mean anything to you, Lady Nollis?’

  ‘I’ll think,’ said Harriet willingly. ‘Reginald Hawkins. Well, we had a groom once called Reg, but his surname was the suitable one of Oates. My father had a batman called Hawkins, but that was in the old war, and he was killed when my father was wounded in the retreat from the Somme.’

  ‘We’ll try another angle, then,’ said Price, with a smile, revealing pearly dentures, which was meant to be reassuring, but brought crocodiles to mind. ‘Lady Nollis, have you ever been troubled by demands with menaces?’

  ‘Blackmail? Good Heavens, no. If I were, I should rush straight to the nearest police station.’

  ‘And you could not act more wisely. You wonder, perhaps, why I put such questions. The fact is, Lady Nollis, we have reason to believe that a gentleman with whom you are acquainted ha
s been victimized by this Hawkins and has not shown your good sense by calling in the police.’

  ‘Really? Who is it?’

  ‘Mr Francis Worthington.’

  ‘Oh, Francis! Yes, we know him well. He and my husband have a mutual interest in ancient manuscripts. But he’d never be anyone’s victim. He’s not the type. I can’t believe that, Inspector.’

  ‘I won’t contradict you, Lady Nollis. The fact is not established. It is merely a possibility. There is another point on which you might assist me. As you are possibly aware, Mr Worthington is at present in the Lake District. Do you know when he went there?’

  ‘I haven’t a clue. I knew he was going — he generally does in the Easter Vacation.’

  ‘You can’t tell me where he spent the week-end before last — the sixth to the eight?’

  Lord Nollis, who had an unfortunate habit of reading aloud items of news from the paper to his wife during breakfast, had read from The Times that a body had been found in Berrinsdale by Mr Francis Worthington, the well-known climber, but Harriet hadn’t wanted to talk or even think of Francis, so she had said, ‘Well, what with the Himalayas and the war and the Middle Ages I suppose he’s hardened to corpses,’ and then Nollis had found something else to read. Now she was at a loss. The questions about Hawkins had confused her. Were they a repercussion from the Wand and Willow, or from Francis’s tiresome discovery in Berrinsdale? Did Francis need an alibi — if so, of course, regardless of consequences, she must give it him. But she had been trained in the hunting field by a father who had been trained on the battlefield, and she knew how fatal it is to dither; she knew that he who hesitates is lost, but he who sitteth on a pin shall rise again; she also knew what chaos arises if in an emergency you deviate from the plan of operations. She said, ‘I’ve no idea, I’m afraid. I was away myself, staying with an old school friend in Sussex.’ This was what Nollis had been told and the faithful Freda Wantage, hand-weaving in a crooked cottage near Alfriston, had been warned, ‘Darling, I know it’s naughty, but if it ever comes up, I was staying with you from April the sixth to eighth inclusive.’

  The answer given, she searched the sharp face for a reaction, but Price’s habitually bleak expression did not change. He had believed her. He was thinking: it’s quite a point against him that even his popsy didn’t know his whereabouts. ‘Well, thank you, Lady Nollis. I must be getting on now. I am sorry to have troubled you, but there was just the chance that, being a friend of Mr Worthington’s, you might have heard something of this man.’

  Harriet looked puzzled. ‘Rather a long shot, wasn’t it? Are you going to dig out all his friends and acquaintances? Surely it would be a better bid to go straight to Francis?’

  Price moved towards the door. She was coming to. Soon she would be asking him how he knew that she knew Francis. He said, ‘Particularly in the case of blackmail, people are often reticent when it is in their own interest to speak out. Gentlemen especially dislike to own that they have been victimized. Now you must excuse me, Lady Nollis. I have to get back to the Yard.’

  I’ll excuse you with pleasure, thought Harriet, but I wish to God I knew what you’re getting at. Automatically, when he had said that he must be getting on, she had pressed the bell, and when Price opened the door the young manservant appeared in the passage, so that Harriet could only say, ‘Good morning,’ which was a relief to Price as he made off, returning ‘Good morning and thank you, Lady Nollis’ over his shoulder and soon catching up and walking abreast with his escort. It was one of his principles to show that he considered all human beings to be equal, so in a condescending tone he remarked, ‘Hard on the feet, these stone passages.’

  Stan Cresswell shot him a glance of disfavour. Why, he thought, doesn’t the ignorant sod keep in his place behind me? He said, ‘My feet are all right, thanks, chum,’ and Price, annoyed at being called ‘chum,’ observed, ‘Not much of a job you’ve got — a lady’s lackey. You’d be better off doing productive work in a factory.’

  ‘That’s what you think, is it?’

  ‘Yes, it is.’

  ‘Then your ’ead wants seeing to,’ said Stan rudely as he abandoned Price at the house door.

  Price told his driver, ‘I won’t stop anywhere for lunch. We’ll go straight through and I’ll get a snack at the canteen.’ His blood was up, but he realized that beyond his ‘hunch’ he had very little against Francis: just the delay in reporting the discovery of the body; the refusal of an alibi; Francis’s knowledge of the terrain; the supposition, at present only supported by a photograph on a writing table and a servant’s gossip, that Francis was ‘blackmailable.’ Price earnestly hoped to find waiting at the Yard some information which he could, as he expressed it to himself, bite upon: Byles would have set into motion the machinery for tracing Hawkins’s car on its journey northwards; Superintendent Armstrong had somewhat sceptically promised to have Francis’s car examined for fingerprints and bloodstains. On arriving at Scotland Yard, Price dashed, as quickly as his obdurate stiffness allowed, upstairs to his minute office, to find that there was no news at all of Hawkins’s Enslow, but that Francis’s M.G. had been examined for bloodstains with a negative result, while of fingerprints two sets had been taken, one set probably a woman’s, neither on record. There was another quite unexpected message. Mr Francis Worthington had telephoned to ask if Detective Inspector Price was returning to Berrinsdale? If not, would he kindly telephone the Berrinsdale Hotel, either before ten or after six o’clock, when Mr Worthington would be available.

  ‘Just like him,’ fumed Price. ‘Something to report in a murder case, but that doesn’t prevent him from going off for the day monkey-climbing over those ghastly mountains. Well, Byles, I was thinking of sending you up there —’

  ‘I’ve no ’ead for ’ights,’ put in Byles quickly.

  ‘Duty is duty whether you’ve an ’ead — I mean a head for heights or not,’ said Price sharply. ‘I don’t like heights myself, but I undertook to climb several hundred feet to examine the spot where the body was discovered. I was saturated with perspiration and unable to effect a change of clothing, and in the afternoon in a quite unexpected downpour I was soaked again — it’s a miracle that I am not at this moment confined to bed with pneumonia. However, to resume what I was saying when you interrupted me —’

  ‘Sorry, sir,’ said Byles.

  ‘— when you interrupted me: I was proposing to send you not to Berrinsdale, but to the towns — if indeed they can be called towns — which might be referred to as the centres of the district, with the purpose of showing the photographs of Hawkins and giving the description of his car at the hotels and garages. However, as a result of Worthington’s communication, I have decided to return to Berrinsdale in person. He may be ready to talk, in which case he would talk more readily to me than to a subordinate. I’ll take the photographs and attend to them myself or call on the local police to assist me. Now, Byles, while I placate the inner man, ring up the station for the time of the train and arrange for a car to be waiting . . .’

  *

  II

  On Wednesday morning it had rained in Berrinsdale, and Francis, unapproachable at breakfast, had been seen shortly afterwards by Gerda Truffer disappearing into a black car drawn up for a moment in the yard, ‘They haf him taken,’ she cried, bursting into the smoking-room, where Meade was reading the newspaper and Sebastian stood disconsolately at the window.

  ‘Who’s taken whom?’ asked Sebastian.

  ‘Your Mr Vorthington. He is gone in a police car.’

  Sebastian said sourly, ‘There’s no need to have kittens. That wasn’t a police car. It was the Holwith taxi taking Francis to the inquest. The police rang him last night. He has to give evidence of finding the corpse — that’s all.’

  ‘Ouf!’ uttered Gerda and sank into a chair. ‘I think he is arrested and my heart it stops beating and my stomach turns upside down. How I am silly! Even the police could not suspect such a man.’

  Francis, speeding
down the dale through sheets of rain was less certain: one could expect an adjournment or at most a verdict against a person or persons unknown, but the Coroner, if an urban type, might share the Detective Inspector’s odd view of one’s delay in reporting the discovery of the body. ‘What sort of a chap is the Coroner?’ he asked his driver, and was relieved to hear, ‘Dr Massey’s a grand climber. Mebbe you’ll have heard of Massey’s Traverse over on Blea Scar?’ Reassured, Francis relapsed into the plain gloom of a climber frustrated by bad weather.

  Under the brisk direction of Dr Massey, who accepted Francis’s evidence without any question, the inquest was adjourned in twenty minutes, and as Francis walked across the pavement to his taxi Massey hurried after him to talk of the new climb. On the doctor’s suggestion, they moved into the warmth and dryness of the nearest bar, with the result that Francis was late for lunch in Berrinsdale, where the clouds had withdrawn and the sun now shone. At the time when Price was travelling to Oxford, Francis and Sebastian set off down the Old Road for the slabs of Cat’s Howe; they were to be joined later by Dr Ormonde and Gerda, who wanted to take tea with them and were obliged to wait for sandwiches and thermos flasks under the jaundiced eye of Edwin Meade, who rarely ate more than a prune on a mountain and disapproved of what he called ‘picnicking females.’

  Walking down the Old Road, the picnicking females discussed the murder. ‘Can it be,’ Gerda asked, ‘that the new-vedded couple are spies in disguise and have bumped off the man for fear he betrays them? I think this because I am suspicious of that couple. I vatch them at meals, they speak not, they give no signs of love, they stare from the vindow.’

  Dr Ormonde said, ‘That’s just why I think they’re genuine. To ‘speak not, to give no sign of love,’ that’s the British way of life, that is. Any foreigners acting British honeymooners would be sure to overdo the affection. Detective Inspector Price, of course, suspects my Worthington.’