*
III
When Francis and Sebastian left the drawing-room, Price sat listening to their conversation in the hall, heard that Sebastian considered him a total drip, thought it significant that even to this hanger-on of his Francis remained uncommunicative, and, hearing nails scrunch the gravel and the sound growing fainter, went out into the hall and telephoned for a police car. Then he sent for Hardwick and told him, ‘Insinuations have been made with reference to the residents at the Hall. I should be obliged if you would tell me what you know of them.’
Hardwick said, ‘If you mean them foreigners, all Ah know is what Ah’ve ’eard from Will Robertson. Chap’s a grand worker, though Nellie’s got ’er knife into ’un on account of ’is Catholic religion. The womun now . . .’
Price held up his hand. ‘I don’t want what you’ve heard. There’s an old tag — what the soldier said isn’t evidence. I want what you know.’
‘That’s nowt, then.’
‘Very well. We’ll skip the servants. What do you know about Mrs Patten and her son?’
Hardwick said carefully, ‘That they lives at t’Hall and was living there when Ah coom.’
‘You know more than that, Hardwick. It is an accepted fact that in isolated communities one’s business is public property — yet another reason why the majority prefer to reside in towns.’
‘You’re wrang there. We’ve an ’elping ’and for friends and neighbours, but we’ve no prying eye. Pattens coom of a gert owd family — these ’ere dales and fells are owd country, Inspector; ’twasn’t discovered, as the summer visitors think, by Mr Wordsworth over in Grasmere Churchyard — and they don’t mix and mingle with t’likes of ous in t’dales. Ah’ve ’eard plenty, but all Ah’ve ’ad from the owd leddy ’erself is guid mornin’ and guid neet, and as for that daft lad with the ’are-lip and awe, ’e just flees away.’
Price diagnosed, ‘Nerves. He’s always been delicate, I believe. And Mrs Patten — she didn’t strike me as snobby, but any person of refinement would find the conditions here uncongenial and naturally turn in on themselves. I don’t suppose that the people from whom you have heard what you call ‘plenty’ have sufficient intelligence to arrive at a similar conclusion; they merely condemn what they do not understand. Now, Hardwick, I have sent for a police car from Divisional Headquarters and I am told that it should reach here well under the hour. I anticipate returning tonight, but I shall take a few necessities with me in case I am unavoidably delayed, in which case I shall be back sometime tomorrow. None of your other visitors show signs of terminating their stay?’
‘The Reeding couple went off this morning . . .’
‘I know that. I understand you are moving me into their room.’
‘That’s reet. Young Mr Brown is cooming oop from Carismouth to-neet. ’E’ll ’ave the room you’re leavin’. Dr Ormonde and the Frewlein are staying out their week. Mr Worthington goes a week from today and Mr Meade, well, ’appen ’e’ll be ’ere a moonth.’
The police car arrived considerably later than Price had been led to expect; the driver had been forced to crawl behind a flock of sheep from Holwith Bridge to Berrinsdale. ‘And I suppose the fellow in charge did nothing to help,’ said Price angrily.
‘There’s nowt to do,’ said the constable.
‘That’s the trouble: you fellows take it lying down. In the south we won’t stand for having our time wasted.’
‘’Tis different down there. This ’ere’s sheep coontry.’
‘That’s what you all say. The fact is you don’t get enough important cases. If —’
The driver braked violently. Price slid forward and his nose met the windscreen. ‘Blast it!’ he cried in pain. ‘What do you think you’re doing?’
‘’Twas Will Robertson’s owd ram,’ explained the constable.
Arriving at Headquarters, disgruntled by the soreness of his nose and the drops of blood on his collar, Price told the Superintendent, ‘Your man’s no driver. He braked for a sheep and threw me against the windscreen. By sheer luck, I escaped with a bruising and a hæmorrhage from the nasal organ, but I advise you to take him off driving.’ Armstrong sent out for a new collar and at some inconvenience produced another driver, and then at last Price, with a map on his knees, set off on the cold scent of one car among the hundreds that had entered the district. Since the examination of Worthington’s M.G. had yielded nothing, it seemed to Price undeniable that Hawkins had been killed by Worthington elsewhere and brought dead into Berrinsdale, and this was supported by the fact that Worthington had left his own car to be overhauled in this small town, a queer thing to do when he had had no breakdown and lived in Oxford with superior facilities to hand.
Price began his enquiries in the town, first visiting the garage where Francis’s M.G. was ready to be collected on the following Friday and assuring himself that Francis had brought in the car no earlier than Saturday, April the thirteenth. Then he tried the hotels and at one it was remembered that Mr Worthington, the Himalayan climber, had taken a gin and Italian while waiting for the Holwith Bridge bus on Saturday, April the thirteenth. Before that? No, Mr Worthington hadn’t been seen since the previous Easter, when he had arrived for tea and presumably driven to Berrinsdale in his car.
The garages of the town knew nothing of Hawkins’s Enslow; his photograph put people in mind of a local bank manager, a cousin in Canada or a certain Minister of the Crown. Fortified by a late but ample lunch, Price tried a wider radius, naturally concentrating on the roads to the south, but here he was told that round holiday time it was unlikely that any but the most peculiar of transients would be remembered. Hawkins might, it was said, be anyone, and out of sight of the fells no one had heard of Francis Worthington.
Driving out to Berrinsdale in the dusk, miserably conscious that he had accomplished nothing, Price, as he passed through the village of Holwith Bridge, had the thought to make a forlorn hope of an enquiry at the hotel. Holwith Bridge is a pretty place; the hotel keeps its back to the mountains and looks down a green valley; emerging from the hump-backed bridge, the noisy beck becomes a wide and shallow river meandering through peaceful pastures grazed by Jerseys, small and mild and clean. This was better country, Price thought, and the hotel looked nice too: through the window he saw a lounge, furnished with several suites; a notice on the door said, ‘No dogs allowed’; in the hall was another notice requesting residents to remove heavy footwear before going upstairs; and there was a proper reception desk.
The reception by an anæmic blonde with a south-country accent was cold but efficient, and the Manager was quickly produced. He was a smart young fellow dressed in a suit — the antithesis of Hardwick in his shirt-sleeves — and he clearly remembered the shocking weather of the week-end of April the sixth. ‘It was impossible to go out, but we are fortunate in having a spacious lounge where our residents can rest and read. In the small drawing-room we have the television and the radio, of course.’ For a moment Price toyed with the idea of sending the police car to Berrinsdale for his suitcase . . . Holwith could truthfully be said to be more central . . . but he must see Worthington . . . he must get something . . . and then there was that Brown fellow coming to Berrinsdale tonight. He said wistfully, ‘Yes, you’ve a nice place here — not like some I could name in the Lake District.’
The Manager drew in his breath sharply. ‘You’re telling me . . .’
Then Price asked almost mechanically whether any car heading towards Berrinsdale had been noticed that snowy week-end and his heart leaped when the Manager said, ‘Well, now I come to think of it, I do believe we served a tea . . . I know we did; I remember inwardly cursing the fellow for taking snow on his shoes into the lounge.’
‘One man, was it?’
‘Yes, one tea.’
Price whipped out his photographs of Hawkins. ‘Was that he?’
The Manager couldn’t say. ‘Well, he was that type; a burly middle-aged man. There are so many of that kind, I wouldn’t swear to him. I�
�ll send for the waiter who served the tea.’
The waiter, slick and oily, wouldn’t swear either. With a sycophant’s glance at the Manager, he said, ‘You understand, Inspector, I’m here to get on with the job, not to gawp at the clients. I noticed the snow the man brought in because I went for a dustpan and brush before it should melt and spoil the lounge carpet and, considering the additional trouble, I was surprised by the meanness of the gratuity he left. Thripence! Mean even in this district, where the tips are not at any time what I was led to expect.’
‘Thank you, Gibbs. That will do,’ said the Manager and, after taking a small gin and tonic on the house to combat his fatigue and asking without result about a slovenly-dressed climber who drove an M.G., Price travelled gloomily from his brief bright haven into the dark heart of the hills. Light streamed from the Berrinsdale Hotel, but as he alighted from the car the air was chill; up among the stars brooded the strange wild heads of the mountains; through the darkness the voice of the beck assumed a snarling tone. Dinner was over, and in unfriendly silence Gloria served him with mutton broth, which he considered to be rough stuff only fit for peasants; cottage pie — well, you could tell from its name who that was meant for; apple pie — he was sweet-toothed and longed for a sundae; and cheese — such a cheese, large and round and scooped out and mauled about by others — he liked his cheese in triangular individual portions, hygienically wrapped in silver paper.
Having finished, or rather picked over, this unsatisfactory meal, he went to the smoking-room and, opening the door and peering through a haze of smoke, discovered a scene which for one ghastly moment caused him to doubt his sobriety. Carey was on the chimney-piece. Worthington, with his back and feet braced against the walls, was ascending an alcove. Shrieking, Fräulein Truffer hung from a curtain pole. On the summit of a tallboy a strange young man, lying on his stomach, extended a hand to Dr Ormonde, precariously balanced on the rails of a ladder-backed chair. On the hearthrug stood Meade doubled up with laughter, whisky glass in hand. ‘Come on, Inspector! Try the traverse of the smoking-room!’ he cried.
‘Thank you, no,’ said Price.
He shut the door on their childishness, went upstairs to his room and, sitting on the edge of the large brass double bed, added to his notes the strong probability that Hawkins had driven himself as far as Holwith Bridge, the gateway as it were, into Berrinsdale. The Holwith Bridge Hotel was the last habitation on the Berrinsdale side of the village; beyond it you followed the highroad for half a mile through pastures; then, where the highway swung away to more civilized places, you turned into the Berrinsdale road and immediately entered the ravine where the road ran beside the beck between formidable crags until the fells stood back around the fields of Robertson’s farm and you were in Berrinsdale. It was more than likely — Price was sure now — that Hawkins had been killed in Berrinsdale; perhaps in that ravine he had been thumbed for a lift by a desperate man, who, knowing the country — its caves and so on — had contrived to lurk there for a week, using his car for shelter, and then had driven by devious routes to the town to leave his car for an overhaul, which should obliterate any trace of recent hard usage, and had turned up in Berrinsdale to ‘discover’ the corpse, insuring — there might well have been some doubt in his mind — that he had left no clue behind him. And Hawkins’s car? Again, for a man with Worthington’s knowledge of the country and Worthington’s nerve that was easy: he would run the car up some mountain track; get out and set it moving. Now it was lying smashed and shapeless in some abyss frequented only by screaming eagles. But in that case wasn’t it strange that Worthington had taken the trouble to carry the corpse all the way up to the bathing pool? Surely it would have been simpler to have left it in the car and got rid of both together? Wait a minute . . . Worthington might have thought that the car was the more likely to be discovered; perhaps he would never have found the corpse if Brown had not suggested bathing . . .
Long after the climbers, noisily hushing each other, had rolled — so it seemed to Price — to bed, he lay pondering and rehearsing the verbal traps in which he hoped to catch Worthington and young Brown in the morning. Then he must put the fear of God into the Superintendent; sabotage at Carismouth or no sabotage at Carismouth, the hills must be searched for the car which might yield a harvest of fingerprints — a slender hope, or was it? University dons, for all their M.As. and B.As., were notoriously helpless outside the sheltering walls of their colleges . . .
Between one and two o’clock Price fell into an uneasy sleep, from which, despite his change of room and aspect, he was soon awakened by cock and cuckoo, to whose voices was added the croon of pigeons from the outbuildings which formed the L shape of the inn. His mind, carrying on during sleep, was already on his case, and he could not help admiring his whole-hearted devotion to duty, though he warned himself: you’re heading for a duodenal, Ron. The sight of a sallow face in his shaving mirror was not reassuring, and at breakfast he refused eggs and bacon and, awaiting the arrival of the climbers, lingered over his cereal. Dr Ormonde and Fräulein Truffer came first, then Meade; then Brown; then Carey. ‘The Skipper’s late,’ said Brown. ‘I hope his performance last night wasn’t too much for him. I’ve an idea for a variation on the Angel.’
Carey said coldly, ‘If you mean for today, I believe we’re going to Pavey Ark.’
Brown said, ‘That’s strange. In all the years I’ve climbed with him, I’ve never known him to make up his mind until he’s had a look at the weather.’
‘Haven’t you? I have,’ said Carey.
Dr Ormonde said, ‘Gerda and I are having a bye-day. We’re going to walk down to Holwith Bridge and look in the shop window.’
Brown said, ‘If you go by the Old Road, there’s a short cut along the side of Cat’s Howe and through the wood at the back of Topper’s Crag. It avoids that boring half-mile of highroad.’
‘Short cut! It may be more pleasant, but I should have thought it was much longer,’ Carey said.
‘You would have thought wrong, then,’ said Brown.
‘How much will you bet?’ said Carey.
‘I don’t bet on certainties,’ said Brown.
Price wondered at the animosity between these youngsters. Brown, he thought, was undoubtedly the better type — less lah-di-dah and evidently fully aware of the evils of betting. He had an idea that on the subject of the murder Brown would prove co-operative; probably he had been educated at a secondary modern school where the accent was on good citizenship, whereas Carey obviously came from one of the old out-of-date class schools, misnamed public, where all the moral teaching they got was wrapped up in the old voodoo. Price thought: as soon as Brown’s finished his breakfast and with luck before Worthington comes down, I’ll get hold of him.
‘What’s the matter with Gloria?’ asked Brown as the waitress, having served everyone with bacon and eggs, went out and shut the door.
‘Nothing as far as I know,’ said Carey.
‘She was scooting along the passages this morning, and I heard her yell for Hardwick. When she called me, she seemed pretty het-up about something.’
‘The sight of your hairy chest,’ suggested Carey.
‘Gloria’s used to men who are men. She’d be much more shocked to see one without hairs on his chest,’ said Brown meaningly.
‘She has perhaps a little quarrel with her lofer had,’ said the Fräulein. She turned her eyes on Brown. ‘Lof is so terrible.’
Brown turned red.
Carey said, ‘I couldn’t agree more. But these North-Country types don’t feel much. All they marry for is a housekeeper.’
‘As the North Chermans. Me, I am Bavarian.’
Brown said, ‘I wonder if, being het-up like she was, Gloria forgot to call the Skipper.’
‘No fear. Haven’t you noticed that we don’t get pots of tea here, only cuppas, and that it’s Glorias custom to call him whom she loves best first, so that he shall have the hottest cuppa? When I first came my cuppa was positively lukers,
but every morning,’ said Carey smugly, ‘it’s been getting hotter and hotter.’
Price’s tea had been stone cold, he remembered.
Meade said, ‘In my young days early morning tea was only for ladies.’
Brown said, ‘I don’t take it.’
Carey said, ‘Francis and I would die without it.’
Brown got up, throwing his table napkin on the floor. ‘I’ll give the Skipper a call, anyway. He likes to make an early start, wherever he’s going.’
Price rose then. ‘Excuse me, Mr Brown. You know who I am, I think. I’d like a word with you in private. Shall we make use of the drawing-room?’
Brown looked at him, scowling. ‘Oh, well, righty-o,’ he said grudgingly.
‘Just a matter of routine,’ said Price in the drawing-room, ‘but all the same I would like to impress upon you the necessity for accuracy in replying even to the most trivial of the questions I may put to you. Now Mr Brown, when you came here last week-end, was it at your suggestion or were you invited by Worthington?’
Brown looked puzzled, but replied without hesitation. ‘I had a standing invitation from Mr Worthington to come any time he was here and try the new climb on the Angel Rock which we planned last year. I work in an engineering firm, so I can only climb at week-ends — except for my holiday, of course — and last Saturday I was in Wasdale with some other Carismouth chaps. In the afternoon the weather looked like clearing, so it occurred to me to give Hardwick a tinkle and ask if Mr Worthington had arrived. You see, you need a good day for the Angel, and in this district you have to make the most of the fine weather while it lasts.’
‘The suggestion came from you, then. Did Mr Worthington attempt to dissuade you from joining him?’
‘No. He only told me not to come if it was wet.’
‘I see. And with reference to your bathing in the pool where the body was discovered: from whom did that suggestion emanate?’
David knit his blond and bushy brows. ‘Let me think . . . oh, yes, I remember. No one suggested it. While we were roping for the climb, Mr Worthington said that we wouldn’t be able to bathe afterwards because there was a corpse in the pool.’
The Body in the Beck Page 12