Otherwise nothing. Brunt whiled away the time marshalling his notes so far; no useful new pattern emerged. Then someone knocked on his door, and after first trying to turn the knob the wrong way, Albert Potter came in.
A big man, a hairy man. Black, barely manageable hair in a spade beard that seemed forever to be wanting to get away at ill-considered angles; a man whose cheeks bore a discomforting resemblance to raw beef even when he was not, as at the moment, overheated from struggling up the Clough.
Detective-Constable Potter was an older man than Brunt, old enough to have been Brunt’s mentor when Brunt was first transferred out of the uniformed wing. It was Potter who had taught Brunt how to be inconspicuous in a shop doorway; who had taught him to trail his quarry from the opposite side of the street. No one knew how old Potter really was. For a decade the rumour had been running round the stations that he was due for retirement next year; but he was still in the force. And if Piper’s Clough had raised his blood-pressure, it was not because the gradient was too steep for him. It was because he would, naturally, have expected to cover the stretch at the same speed he would have walked a level, well-paved road. Potter was a great believer in steady progress.
Brunt was pleased to see him. He had not expected him until the next day. It was the first time that Potter had actually worked for him; but Potter was not the one to feel resentment at having to take orders from a former pupil. I like to see the lads get on. Brunt had heard him say it about others. Potter knew without being told why he himself would never be promoted.
‘Did you come by train, Sergeant?’
No irony in the use of Brunt’s rank. Brunt was a sergeant; that was it. Potter sat down like an inert load on the side of his sergeant’s bed.
‘Nearly,’ Brunt said. ‘I caught sight of its tail-lamps twice.’
‘It’s my first trip on the line. Our fastest stretch was sixteen miles three furlongs in four hours twelve minutes.’ Potter was the living master of arcane detail. ‘We stopped once while the train-crew went off for lunch at a pub. Our hopes were raised when the fireman came back after three-quarters of an hour. Big chap with a gigantic head …’
‘Jack Plant.’
‘What he’d really come for was the driver’s concertina. He went off across the fields with it, and they were gone another hour.’
‘Anyway, you’ve been to Rowsley?’
‘I have.’
Potter brought a sheaf of papers from his Gladstone bag. Paperwork was the bane and besetting failure of his life. He knew it, regretted it and yet was paradoxically proud of each creative sacrifice. Brunt read his report through once and was careful what he said next. One always had to be at least a little careful with Potter on the subject of literary composition. One would hesitate to point out to him, for example, that if one will begin one’s preamble with Whereas, one must expect syntactical problems sooner or later. One had to remember that Potter was no mean policeman. In perception, Brunt rated him second to few – and in enthusiasm he was a giant apart.
‘So: you went to Rowsley. And you formed the impression that the girl was clean, sober, punctual and diligent?’
‘That’s right.’
Potter was always pleased when one read aloud from his incunabula without active disapproval.
‘Anything else about her?’
‘Bit silly, I’d say.’
‘In what sense? Simple-minded? Unreliable? Skittish? Giggly?’
‘She couldn’t have been any of those things, could she?’
‘I don’t know. Couldn’t she?’
‘If she had, the Alloways wouldn’t have taken her to their hearts the way they did.’
‘They did, did they?’
‘No doubt about that.’
‘So in what sense was she silly?’
Potter ran his fingers through his beard.
‘I call it silly, chucking up a good home, plenty of outings, well thought of by all the family, by stealing something that was no real use to her.’
‘Now steady, Albert. Let’s take this a point at a time. A good home …’
‘It certainly was. Plenty of money about, for one thing, and not their master. The Alloways have never been servants themselves, so they know how to treat a servant. The girl always had the same to eat as them – I mean, apart from artichokes and asparagus, and that sort of bloody rubbish, which she wouldn’t have liked anyway.’
‘And outings, you said?’
‘Always going somewhere: Matlock Bath, the Winnats, Hathersage. From late spring to early autumn they lived out of doors. Lovely gardens, roses and Christ knows what. And hardly any fire-places.’
‘Fire-places?’
Potter answered as bitterly as if he had spent half his own life on his knees with a housemaid’s box and a black-leading brush.
‘For five or six months of the year she’d only the morning-room to do. And they have a gas-geyser in the bathroom, so she hadn’t to go humping hot water up three flights of stairs every time some bugger felt a bit soiled. And half their meals were picnics – with Amy Harrington passing the plates round – and eating off them herself a couple of minutes later.’
‘Maybe she wasn’t the sort to count her blessings.’
‘Oh, but she was.’ Potter looked positively hurt that he should be called on to substantiate the point.
‘She was a nice girl, Sergeant. At home and at Sunday School she’d been taught to know her place. She used to sidle up to Mrs Alloway sometimes and tell her how grateful she was. Not smarmy, like; genuine. And Mrs Alloway loved the girl almost as if she were her own. That’s what makes it so surprising …’
Brunt interrupted on a different note.
‘Any men about?’
‘Mr Alloway.’ Potter shook his head emphatically.
‘Nothing there – not what you’re thinking. There was a son, a couple of years younger than Amy, only there in the school holidays. I tried to probe that, but it wasn’t easy. Mrs Alloway’s mind doesn’t run along those channels at all. It wouldn’t, would it, talking to me? But I’m pretty sure there wasn’t anything there. Also there was a daughter, younger still. Amy used to do her sums for her, sometimes, behind the governess’s back – and didn’t always get them right. You see, Tom,’ Potter really was surrendering to his enthusiasm now. ‘There’s no rhyme or reason about what Amy did.’
‘What did she do?’
Potter rubbed a pliable nose with his knuckles. ‘This is the curious thing. Mrs Alloway had missed a pair of Zylonite hair-brushes and a dressing-comb from her toilet-table.’
‘What’s Zylonite?’
‘I don’t know. That’s what Mrs Alloway called it. These things were not specially valuable,’ but they ought not to have gone astray. She searched high and low for them. Then she found Amy Harrington’s bedroom door ajar. The girl had a woven split-cane hold-all, in which she’d brought her things over from Eleanor Copley’s, and a corner of it was sticking out from under her bed, as if it had been recently moved. She opened it, and there were the missing articles. Of course, she beat the big drum about it. Told the girl she would have to go, and she was having the police in, and she’d have to write and tell her father. The silly thing is that she had no intention of doing anything of the sort. She was terribly upset by it. She couldn’t for the life of her understand what had got into the girl – it was so completely out of character. But she saw no harm in scaring the wits out of her – giving the girl a rotten night in which to think things out. The next thing she knew, the girl had gone – split-cane hold-all and all.’
‘Did she get in touch with the police?’
‘She had the Rowsley sergeant over, and he said he’d set up a hue and cry if she wanted to bring charges, which she solidly refused to do.’
‘She didn’t write to the father?’
‘She tortured herself about that. Started a letter and screwed it up several times. Amy had told her enough about what things were like at home for her to know that Harrington w
ould have half killed the girl if he could have got hold of her.’
‘He would, too. I once had a similar case.’
‘The next thing, Mrs Alloway had a letter from the girl, announcing that she’d got this other job, apologising for all the worry she had caused, pleading not to have her future torn apart for her.’
‘Admitting the theft?’
‘Not in so many words. Mystifying. But fact is fact.’
‘Any strangers in the house or district? You went into that?’
‘Tried to. But it was eighteen months ago. You know what it’s like trying to jog people’s memory after a week.’
Brunt looked at his watch.
‘Find her. That’s my brief. I’m beginning to have an uneasy feeling about what state she’ll be in. Time for a drink, Albert. Come downstairs, and with a bit of luck you’ll hear a little inside information about the running of the old Cromford and High Peak. And thank you for your efforts in Rowsley. Clean, sober, punctual and diligent. A good report, Albert.’
‘Thank you, Sergeant.’
They had been friends before, but it was cemented now.
Chapter Nine
‘Of course, there are people who think that the Cromford and High Peak is run for the benefit of the general public, but those who’ve made a study of the matter know that it’s really run for Thos Beresford’s.’
Sammy Nall; the cadaverous, hungry story-teller who looked as if the feast he really craved for was a bottomless tale of universal calamity. Brunt had been looking forward to Potter’s reactions to the Beresford legend, but somehow, now it was all starting up again, the prospect seemed less funny.
‘Like that time he nearly ran out of coal on the way up to Bunsall. Thos liked to drop a lump or two off at Haslin Cottages, but this morning he’d missed them, either because he was short, or because it had got out of his head. Then, over by Belfield’s Brow, he liked to make one of his stops. He always reckons to set his traps on the evening run, then look at them again on the morning round. And while he was off the engine, Jack Plant had to go up to Logan’s farm for some eggs. When they came back, they found that someone from Haslin’s had been and helped himself from the tender. Only whoever it was had overdone it. Thos reckoned he had enough left to get them up to Bunsall, but not enough for the return run. There was nothing for it but to reverse the train back to Haslin and try to get some of it back. Thos did that, right enough, but not before he’d got into a fight about it. Then his reversing gear stuck, and he had to half take it down and put it together again. And while they were doing that, they let the old engine get off the boil, so they had to scrape the clinker out and make a fresh start on the fire. Then Thos spilled his tea, because he had a loose regulator valve that kept falling shut, and he’d had to hang his can over the handle to keep it open. So they had to stop at Tommy Ashmore’s place to brew a fresh lot. And ten or twenty passengers waiting up at Bunsall with a wind lashing down from the Cat and Fiddle that had their clothes flapping round them like the sails of a China clipper.’
‘Thos is supping a lot of ale these days,’ somebody said.
‘Yes, and if some of these gentry who’ve come up to see the hills could see the state he was in at the throttle, they’d get out and walk. The way he hangs on to that handle nowadays, there’s no danger of it falling shut. Mind you, he says that old engine doesn’t need to be driven: it knows its own way round. One afternoon he nearly forgot to stop at Dowlow Halt, but the old engine knew. He says he felt the brakes go on of their own accord.’
‘It could have been Jack Plant, of course.’
‘Jack knows how to keep him on the rails without upsetting him.’
Then a newcomer came in, a wiry but rugged, elderly little man, whom nobody referred to by any name but Blucher – pronunciation strictly anglicised.
‘Old Nought-Four-Nought not in yet?’
‘Give him another half hour. A man with two wives has to spend some time at home.’
‘When Thos strikes the road tonight, it’ll happen be with but one intent.’
‘How’s that, then, Blucher?’
‘The Rector’s had old Juggler dig old Thos’s patch.’
Old Juggler was the sexton, a man who stood in a peculiar relationship to the habitués of The Crooked Rake. Fundamentally he was one of them, and in a general way he was given special dispensation because of his unavoidable closeness to authority; but they only half forgave him for it, and did not trust him.
‘He can’t do that,’ someone said. ‘Old Thos always says he can’t be touched as long as he has a crop in the ground.’
‘His crop’s out of the ground. Old Juggler had to sack his taters and wheel them round to Thos’s on a barrow.’
Some man smacked his lips over his ale. Any crowd enjoys seeing a pebble slung at a giant.
‘So which of Thos’s missuses was in when Juggler called?’
‘Both on’em,’ Blucher said.
‘And which one answered the door?’
‘Both on’em.’
A renewed silence had a tinge of respect in it.
‘And is Juggler still in one piece?’
A man with the lining sticking out of the side of his cap went up to have his pot refilled.
‘So what’ll Thos do now, do you reckon?’
‘Have that fire he’s always promised us, up at the Stump.’
‘He’s been talking for weeks of burning an effigy of the Captain. Happen he’ll chuck the Rector on the same pile.’
‘Fat lot of bloody good that will do.’
‘It worked years ago. The Rector climbed down about the gravediggers’ale.’
‘He was only a young man in those days, not so sure of his ground.’
Brunt risked a direct intervention. ‘What does he want to burn an effigy of the Captain for?’
But this was too much for them. Brunt knew he had made a mistake. They looked uneasily at each other, no one prepared to answer. At last someone felt obliged to come to Beresford’s defence.
‘You don’t have to take too much notice of everything Thos says.’
Brunt was aware that he was observing a watershed in the affairs of the Rake. Yesterday Thos had been the undisputed tribal champion. Now the sling had been wielded. Was he going to scratch his temple in casual annoyance? Or was this going to prove a mortal blow? Clearly there were men here who thought it was; but they lacked the confidence to say so yet.
Supper was brought for the two policemen, but not by the girl from Bristol. It was served by the landlord’s wife, a nonentity of whom little was seen about the inn, who rarely spoke and even less often smiled. The food was the same as yesterday: cold meat, pickles and cheese – and what had yesterday seemed highly gratifying was now beginning to look a little sorry for itself.
They had almost finished their meal when they heard hooves in the yard. But this time Thos did not address his horse with any jocular remarks. He even seemed to have lost the knack of the years, for the front door jammed in front of him, and he had to lunge savagely at it with his shoulder. He passed through the length of the bar without looking at anyone. His tankard was taken from its hook on a rafter and filled for him. Jack Plant followed him and closed the door with the confident gentleness of a big man.
Beresford took back his first pint in a draught, then asked for another. When it had been drawn, he brought it across and set it down aggressively on the table amidst Brunt’s and Potter’s plates. Then, without waiting for an invitation, he slid his body over the bench opposite them.
‘You two gentlemen can help me. I want you to go and arrest the Rector.’
His eye-brows were working furiously, alternating between wild interrogation and murderous menace.
‘That,’ Brunt said, ‘might not be your neatest course to satisfaction. He would almost certainly be discharged within minutes. Any bench of justices would be sure to stop the hearing. In which case you would lose considerable face, and I would probably have to come prospecting fo
r lead for a living.’
‘Is that so?’
‘That is so,’ Brunt said soberly, and Potter nodded.
The eye-brows looked as if they themselves would be prepared to take on the Rector single-handed. And Brunt understood in that moment that it was unfair to judge the man by those brows – or even to try to interpret them. He was their victim, rather than their master. He was in similar case to one of his wives – the little tubby one, who appeared to smile.
‘In that case, I must ask you gentlemen for the benefit of your superior education.’
‘A debatable premise,’ Brunt said. ‘But we’ll do our best.’
‘Is it or is it not the law of this land that a man cannot be evicted from a plot on which he has a growing crop?’
‘Again, debatable – and it does not fall within our province. It is a point of civil law – one on which I think the lawyers would grow fat whilst you went thin. I’m sorry, Thos, but I’m afraid you’ll have to ask your solicitor.’
‘You mean you’re too bloody scared.’
‘Too bloody scared,’ Brunt agreed amicably. ‘I always am bloody scared when the law can’t make its own mind up.’
The eye-brows remained in penetrating immobility for some seconds. But the remark seemed to appeal to Beresford’s streak of reason; it was honestly self-effacing, and this may have convinced him that it was therefore sound. He slewed round, thumped the table and addressed the whole company.
‘In that case, we shall have to burn the bugger. There’s nowt else for it. Next Tuesday. We’ll have the biggest bloody fire since the Relief of Inkerman.’
No one repeated their doubts. After a brief pause, Blucher summed up the feeling of the meeting.
‘Aye. We’ll have a bloody fire, then.’
There were murmurs of agreement, but no great enthusiasm. Brunt turned to Beresford. It was time to get him on to something else.
‘I’m sorry we can’t be much help to you, Thos. Because you could be of considerable help to us.’
‘Always willing to try, providing it’ll cost me nowt.’
‘We’ve been wondering who’s not been attending to his traps.’
Gamekeeper's Gallows Page 6