Gamekeeper's Gallows

by John Buxton Hilton

  The cottage was humble – for once the adjective was apposite – but he could not help being impressed by the quality of three or four pieces of glassware which she had on a small shelf evidently put up for this single purpose. And she was deaf. Brunt found himself shouting, simplifying, repeating. He put the Turkish coin into her hand.

  ‘Have you ever seen one like this before?’

  She went straight to a curtained alcove and brought out the twin of it, which she thrust at him.

  ‘Here, take it. Given to me by my mother, and to her by hers. And it’s brought none of us anything but misery. A shameful story, a disgrace to the whole village. And I suppose I’m in trouble with you, now, for having it in the house?’

  ‘No, nothing like that,’ Brunt said, and tried to put her at her ease. He could turn on a decent smile when he wanted to. ‘But there are other things that are a disgrace to this village, aren’t there? I said other things – disgrace to the village—’

  ‘I can follow you better if you talk quietly,’ she said. Of course, lip-reading. Brunt was ashamed of himself for not having thought of it.

  ‘I said, there are other things that go on in this village …’

  She screwed up her face with disgust. ‘Artists and painters …’

  ‘You mean at the Hall. Does Captain Kingsey give big parties?’

  She shook her head. ‘It’s a small mercy that he keeps himself very closely to himself. But that doesn’t help those who are close tied to him.’

  ‘What sort of goings-on?’ Brunt asked.

  ‘Disgusting.’

  Brunt wanted to ask her how she knew, but she could not have given him an articulate answer. Moreover, Brunt understood: there was such a thing as community consciousness. No one had stopped to analyse what had happened to the Turkish pedlar; no one had dared to talk about it; but everyone had known.

  ‘Take that slip of a girl, the one that ran away. If you ask me, she was the lucky one.’

  ‘Amy Harrington, you mean?’

  ‘I don’t know what they called her. I only know she didn’t stay. Though it’s true that no one saw the going of her.’

  ‘No one?’

  ‘They say. They say she got away. But it’s funny, no one will speak to having seen her. No one saw her down the Clough. No one can speak to having seen her on the Fly.’

  ‘Who are they, Mrs Hallum?’

  But he knew that it was a useless question.

  ‘People,’ she said. ‘You can’t hide things from people.’

  Brunt’s next call was at the Beresfords’ cottage, having first assured himself that at this hour Thos was himself either driving his train or shooting rabbits somewhere on the long stretch between the Bunsall and the Hopton Inclines.

  There were several striking things about Thos’s home. The first was that the diamond-slatted trellis-work on which a few late roses climbed beside the porch was of precisely the same vintage as adorned one or two of the C. and H.P’s prouder stations. In place of a door-knob there was a four-spoked brass wheel of the kind with which Brunt had yesterday failed to operate an injector. He paused before knocking at the door, for a quarrel was going on inside the house, producing as much noise, it seemed, as half a street in Tapton or Ilkeston could have created. And yet there were only two voices raised in heathen dissonance. The subject of contention seemed to be someone’s head, and it seemed – as far as any running sense at all could be made of the argument – that this member had become detached and that what was at issue was the extent and nature of surgery required. Brunt rapped with his knuckles and the quarrel was silenced in mid-syllable. A cat came up and began rubbing itself against Brunt’s ankle, no doubt intending to slip into the house under cover of his entrance.

  Judging that the inmates may not have been certain of his first knock, Brunt rapped again, and this time the door was opened to him by two women who stood looking at him from a yard or two apart: one of them a chubby little baked apple of a woman with an inverted Cupid’s bow of a mouth that gave the impression she was always smiling; the other grotesquely tall, with a face whose ferocity, if assumed, must make her one of the finest actresses in the land.

  ‘I’d like to speak to Mrs Beresford,’ Brunt said.

  ‘Oh, yes? Which one?’

  ‘Mrs Thos Beresford.’

  The tall one stood aside with a mock heroic sweep of her forearm.

  ‘Come in,’ she said, ‘and take your pick.’

  Chapter Five

  Thos Beresford had not been content with taking two wives. Perhaps it was understandable that no ordinary woman would have been adequate for him; but even in duplication he appeared to have achieved something over the odds. The interior of the cottage was in a state of chaos doubtless reflecting the underlying philosophies of the household.

  ‘Actually, we are sisters,’ the taller one explained. ‘And good friends.’

  ‘I expect you need to be,’ Brunt said, ‘if you’re both married to Thos.’

  ‘I can assure you, Mr Brunt, that was done in a church.’

  Indeed? In the absence presumably of officiating clergy. The ogress allowed her lower lip to sag, revealing irregular yellow teeth in the basic intention of a smile. Within the course of the next few minutes Brunt concluded that the chubby one’s smile was wholly illusory and the other one’s scowl equally misleading. No doubt Thos had come to terms with it.

  ‘I said to Lois, that gentleman from the detective office will be dropping in, didn’t I, Lois?’

  ‘You did, Dora.’

  Lois smiled, or didn’t smile, as the case might be. Brunt allowed his eyes to begin a scientific exploration of the room. He eventually decided that what the two women were engaged upon was a preliminary skirmish for a sewing operation. Like some soldiers, who will not attack until they have established their supporting forces, the Beresford women evidently believed in getting ready first. They were stylists; they thought big; when they sewed, it was on a grand scale. Wools, cottons, thimbles – two lidless boxes of them – mushrooms, embroidery frames: everything they had seemed to have been got out in preparation.

  Moreover, it was not immediately clear what genre of workmanship was being contemplated. Perhaps running repairs were about to be broached to some of Thos’s old clothes, for these lay about the room in great profusion: boiler-suits, trousers, hats, socks and even boots. But if this were the case, then it looked as if half a life-time’s accumulated deficiencies were about to be put right for the remainder of Thos’s days. Dora pioneered a route across the room for him by seizing an armful of assorted rags and throwing them up into the air. Brunt, picking up a pair of long woollen underpants, and dropping them as respectfully as he could on a corner of the fender, made himself a space on which he sat. He then brought the coin out of his pocket and passed it over to Lois.

  ‘Beresford has got a lot of those,’ Dora said. ‘But then, if he isn’t entitled to them, who is? The ostler was his direct ancestor, and he paid the price.’

  ‘Price.’ The other one invariably came in late with the last word or two of her sister’s speech.

  ‘So what Beresford has, has, as you might say, been paid for.’

  ‘For.’

  Brunt leaped from his chair and extracted an errant needle from his bottom.

  ‘Tell me, ladies, has Beresford to your knowledge ever tried to sell any of his collection?’

  ‘Oh, no. He’d never do that.’

  ‘That.’

  ‘You’re sure?’

  Dora was; she nodded violently. But Lois was not so certain. Brunt watched suspicion cloud her eyes, though it still did not detract from the misleading merriment of her mouth. After a moment of unconcealed mental unease she brought out a tin box whose lid bore a scene from Gainsborough. She plunged in both hands, as if she were about to bring out a lump of dough, producing instead two handsful of mixed coin from various empires. Her sister cleared a corner of the table and for silent minutes she sorted the money out into regular p
iles, appearing to know her way well about the denominations. At one point she appeared puzzled and anxious, as if something was not in order, and at this moment there was no sound in their room but their breathing and the ticking of a clock.

  At the beginning of his visit, Brunt had been struck by a powerful and bewildering feeling of unreality – as if he had walked out of Derbyshire into the middle of a Punch and Judy show. But of a sudden these two improbable women were immersed in something that was vital to them, Dora intently watching her sister’s every move. Lois suddenly found a fugitive small coin that had become sandwiched between two larger neighbours. Brunt almost shared their relief.

  ‘It’s all there.’

  ‘Of course,’ Brunt said. ‘There must be similar collections in the village.’

  ‘Not many, nowadays. A lot got lost, some was sold. Though, of course, when all’s said and done. Captain Kingsey has the lion’s share. It stands to sense.’

  ‘Does it?’ Brunt asked.

  ‘Naturally. If you look at the list of vicars’names in the church, you’ll see the Reverend Jeremiah Kingsey, 1706 to 1723. Actually, the Captain is only a very distant relation. The Hall came to him through a distant cousin when the line ran out. And all that was in it.’

  ‘You’re not suggesting that even the vicar was involved in that business?’

  ‘Good gracious, no. Vicars don’t go mixing themselves up in that sort of caper. But the Reverend Kingsey, you see, he was the chief one of the magistrates, when they had the trial in The Crooked Rake. He always was as thick as thieves with the landlord.’

  Dora gave what was meant to be an affectionate kick at the mountain of old clothes, sending several garments flying through the air at shoulder level.

  ‘That’s what this lot is for, the Rector – the present one, of course.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Because we’re going to burn him at the stake.’

  ‘Indeed?’

  ‘In effigy, you know. Because he has thrown Beresford off his allotment.’

  ‘And do you think that will make him change his mind?’

  ‘It did once before, years ago, when he was a young man and tried to stop the gravediggers from drinking beer.’

  ‘I see.’

  But Brunt had just seen something else, thrown to the top of the pile by Dora’s ecstatic kick. He leaned forward and picked it up: a girl’s cheap cape in black cashmere. On the underside of the lower hem, worked in not very elegant stitches, were the initials A.H. Brunt looked up and saw that both women’s eyes were motionless on him.

  ‘I can see you looking at that,’ Dora said.

  ‘Does that surprise you?’

  ‘That came from the Hall, from Captain Kingsey, amongst a lot of stuff he sent out to the jumble sale. I expect it belonged to that young lady who ran away.’

  ‘I expect it did.’

  ‘And who’s to blame her for that? For running away, I mean. The things that people say go on at that Hall. You ought to talk to Beresford about it.’

  ‘I probably will.’

  ‘He can tell you a lot about the Hall, can Beresford. And about Amy Harrington.’

  ‘I dare say he can.’

  At which moment Dora accidentally caught a delicately poised box in a dramatic sweep of her arm, showering Brunt in an enfilading fire of thimbles. As he left the house, he heard the quarrel start up again.

  Chapter Six

  Brunt was received at the Hall with scrupulous courtesy but with equally deliberate lack of warmth. Edwards, the butler, whom he had observed the previous evening buying his ale for consumption off the premises, had the art of observing social forms whilst at the same time making it plain that his own judgment was reserved – and might, indeed, never be expressed. He kept his eye dutifully averted from Brunt’s dress, though it was clear that such lack of pride would never be tolerated below stairs – except perhaps in an under-gardener in inclement weather.

  Captain Kingsey looked a younger man than Brunt had been expecting. He looked barely into his forties, though his jowls were beginning to fill out. He was wearing a dark blue smoking-jacket with quilted lapels, held at the waist by a girdle of red silken rope. On his head he had a soft round pill-box hat, embroidered with some oriental motif that Brunt could not interpret, and from the centre of its crown a red tassel hung rakishly down to his left ear. The impression that his manner gave was subtle but not unclear: he was not positively offended by Brunt’s visit, but not amused by it, either; nor was he persuaded that it was likely to serve any useful purpose. He was prepared to unbend sufficiently to answer any reasonable questions, but his interpretation of what was reasonable was likely to be circumscribed and uncompromising.

  He walked with a halt in his left foot, barely perceptible but inescapable – there was evidence about his souvenirs that he had been an army man. He led Brunt along the polished parquet of a long corridor with alcoves lined with paintings, mostly in oils and of landscapes. And he maintained a commentary, marked by a certain weary glibness, as he watched where Brunt’s eyes were lingering.

  ‘Joseph Stannard, of the Norwich School: The Maltings, Stoke-by-Nayland; Hayman: Study for a scene from Clarissa Harlowe; ah, and I see, Sergeant, that you are a man of some artistic discernment. What you are looking at there is one of Cotman’s original sketches for Dawson Turner’s Architectural Antiquities of Normandy.’

  He took Brunt to a large, quiet study on an upper floor, the walls lined with bindings some of which were as old as the printed book.

  ‘Now, Sergeant, you have not come here to consider objets d’art.’

  ‘Not indeed for their intrinsic merits, that is true, sir, though they may not be entirely irrelevant. There are in fact two issues that I am trying to resolve, and they may be inter-related.’

  Kingsey had coffee brought for himself in a Sèvres service, and lit himself a cigar from a box labelled Villar y Villar. He offered Brunt no hospitality.

  ‘Two things, sir. Firstly, the disappearance of a seventeen-year-old housemaid, by name Amy Harrington. Secondly, the possible theft of a number of articles, principally coins of various realms, but predominantly of Near Eastern provenance.’

  Kingsey smiled thinly and got up from his desk.

  ‘Possibly inter-related, I think you said, Sergeant?’

  He went to a redwood cabinet, pulled open a shallow drawer and showed Brunt a numismatologist’s tray with hand-written labels still gummed beneath its empty round slots.

  ‘Possibly inter-related? The absence of the girl and of these coins was noticed on precisely the same morning, to wit the twenty-third of April last. I began at the time to make an inventory of what was missing: it became such a bore that I never finished it. There were two engine-tooled ornamental candlesticks, virtually valueless, but of a certain vulgar intricacy that might have misled a house-maid. There was a square of Caucasian tapestry that really is unique.’

  ‘At least, sir, we think that we may have recovered some of your treasures. Almost certainly some of the coins; and I have no doubt you can identify the tapestry?’

  Kingsey looked pleasantly interested, but by no means excited.

  ‘And when do you think, Sergeant, that I might regain possession?’

  ‘There will have to be formalities, of course, to establish your ownership. A line or two of affidavit will suffice. But we cannot help wondering why you did not report your losses.’

  Kingsey smiled pathetically. ‘Sergeant Brunt, you will have noticed that I live in a lonely, one might almost say a desolate spot – and I am here wholly by choice. I claim to be a happy man. I am surrounded by what I like and I spend the whole of my time doing the things that I want to. I do not have to worry where my next cigar – or, for that matter, my next square of Caucasian tapestry – is to come from. That last one cost a large sum of money – but peace, freedom from interruption, freedom to get on with my critical history of English painting – these things are priceless to me, too.’

>   His smile became decidedly rueful.

  ‘Nevertheless,’ Brunt said, ‘we cannot expect to control the criminal classes if the public will not take us into their confidence.’

  ‘No, of course, I see that. I seem to have failed signally as a dutiful citizen. But I cannot bring myself to think of my departed house-maid as a menace to society. An opportunist, perhaps; a stupid girl. She may have acted in panic because of something that she misunderstood.’

  Brunt was bright with interest. ‘What sort of thing had you in mind, sir?’

  ‘I had nothing in mind at all, Sergeant. I don’t know what goes on in their silly little brains.’

  ‘If I may remind you, sir, you did tell the girl’s father, when you answered his letter, that you would lay charges against her if she should endeavour to return.’

  ‘Did I? I must take your word for it, I cannot remember. I regard consistency as an unnecessary bore; but that is a luxury such as you could hardly allow yourself in the lower reaches of your police force. I wanted to make it clear that I had no wish for her to come importuning me in an access of remorse.’

  ‘You think she was the sort of girl who might do so?’

  ‘I really could not say, Sergeant.’

  ‘Forgive me, sir, but I do not fully understand. You said just now that she might have endeavoured to come back. I cannot quite see why you should have expected that.’

  ‘I did not expect it, Sergeant. I thought it was on the cards that she might have tried. And that would have irritated me beyond toleration. I have a horror of hysteria. These girls have some stupid notions: sententious moral ideas, derived from the silly novels that they read by candlelight. Faced by her first set-backs in the outside world, she might have returned with her loot to snivel for forgiveness. Such a scene could have thrown me off my working aplomb – perhaps for a month.’