Gamekeeper's Gallows

by John Buxton Hilton

  ‘Later on. I shall sup enough tonight to flood the rake. But just now I’ve got work to do. What do we want to wait till Tuesday for? Let’s have the fire tonight. Let’s make it a blaze that will settle Kingsey, the Rector and the Cromford and High Peak for all time.’

  It would not settle anything for any time at all: and what of tomorrow? But Thos Beresford was now concentrating the whole of his salvation in the thought of his fire.

  ‘Come on, lads. Why are we leaving it to the women?’

  Throughout the morning, whipped on by the merciless eyes of Lois and Dora, the women of the village had been filing up and down the Clough, shouldering towers of brushwood, so that the valley had begun to look like a scene from a production of Macbeth. And Thos had no difficulty in whipping up the enthusiasm of the men. Men would have carried huge loads long distances, this morning, rather than risk offence in the eyes of Thos.

  Brunt resigned himself to another period of waiting. This time there really was not much that he could do before Potter came back. But patience was hard to force upon himself. He even went to lie on his bed; but idleness was too much for him. He walked down the Clough to meet Potter well before time.

  The train was no more than a few minutes overdue. Jack Plant was still plying the shovel, and a driver whom Brunt had not seen before was leaning out of the cab. Potter, large, black whiskered and indefatigable, presented the solid sort of sight that Brunt most wanted to see. The older man started talking as soon as his feet were on the platform.

  ‘A message from the Superintendent: you’re to concentrate on Amy Harrington. He’s glad there are other aspects of the case that have come to your notice. They will be taken care of in due course, if necessary by other people. You’ve got to account for the girl, and what happened to her. And I’ll tell you what, Sergeant.’

  They had to side-step along the narrow path to avoid Blucher, who was struggling downhill under the awkward burden of two broken chairs. The fervour of Beresford’s blazing gesture had taken hold of the whole village now, and many combustible articles that were now being thrown out as rubbish would be sorely missed over the months to come.

  ‘I’ll tell you what, Sergeant, what with this electric telegraph, there’s going to come a time when this country’s not going to be safe for a wrong’un to operate in. Did you know that they already know in our office about a suitcase full of rolled-up paintings that was found abandoned on Castlethorpe Station the day before yesterday?’

  ‘Where the hell’s Castlethorpe?’

  ‘Somewhere in the South Midlands. It’s where you’d join the line if you were paying a call in Yardley Gobion – as Fletcher did.’

  ‘And where he was returning yesterday.’

  ‘There’s nothing definite to connect the bag with Fletcher as yet. That will come. He must have dumped it between two milk churns and an advertisement placard. And when they opened it up, they found stuff that’s been missing from all over the place for years.

  Not in frames, you understand: canvases rolled up in tubes. Franz Hals, is it? Jan Steen? Buggered if I remember all their names.’

  ‘Kingsey getting rid of some of his hotter numbers,’ Brunt said, ‘and still hoping to get away with it anonymously. At least, I suppose he deserves some credit for not destroying the things. And, anyway, Fletcher and the girl were on the Fly with you. Did you keep track of them?’

  ‘Fletcher over-nighted at Derby: at the Ram’s Head. He was tailed on the train going south this morning.’

  ‘There’s another thing that will have to be taken up with him,’ Brunt said.

  But now Dora Beresford was coming down the path ahead of them, scarcely noticing the weight, it seemed, of a bursting horsehair sofa. She beamed at them, yawed magnanimously out of her course for Brunt’s convenience, and narrowly missed catching Potter’s ear with a dangling castor.

  ‘What’s that, then, Sergeant?’

  ‘Those Turkish bits and pieces that made their exit the same day Amy Harrington did. For my money they were in a brown paper envelope that Fletcher brought out of the study within half an hour of the girl’s going. He doesn’t miss a trick, doesn’t Fletcher. He knew she’d be blamed.’

  ‘And he sold them to Isaac Mosley? Would Mosley keep his mouth shut just to protect a man like Fletcher?’

  ‘No doubt about that. Fletcher – the boss’s trusty – he could be more use to Mosley than the boss himself. And Mosley still has to make a living for himself when he’s done his present stretch.’

  ‘So what’s our programme now?’ Potter asked.

  ‘It’s Piper’s Fold’s night out. We might as well make it ours as well. Get what fun we can out of it – and anything else that may be going. There may be something to be learned from the mob reaction.’

  Potter and Brunt were on the scene well before dusk – as the greens of the landscape were just beginning to fade to an indeterminate yellow. A lot of other people were there early, too – including a swarm of children, who were being kept away from meddling distance of the fire by a cordon of raucous women. They did not want any individualist to kindle a light to the pile before the village had all foregathered.

  Everything had been made ready: an enormous pile of tinder-dry inflammables had been stacked up, reaching to such a height that only the summit of the Turks’cairn was visible above the top of the heap. The cordon of hanging vermin had been strung in a semi-circle in front of the pyre, and was acting as a demarcation line for the nearest point of permissible approach. Only the effigies still needed to be brought on to the screen. Two decrepit old chairs had been roped to the top of the pile, and were ready like vacant thrones to receive them. A good deal of painstaking effort had gone into arranging and balancing them.

  And then a cheer arose from the assembled villagers. The three Beresfords were coming down the ridgy track along a flank of the Clough leading two horses, Thos’s and Jack Plant’s, into the saddles of which the stuffed figures had been strapped, their faces towards the cruppers. Ungainly and uncouth: caricatures, yet bearing sufficient resemblance to the originals to be distinctly disturbing.

  But in front of the Beresfords another figure was running, with shoulders humped and head thrust forward. Brunt did not recognise at first who it was. But then the figure almost fell, saving herself only by thrusting the flat of her hand out against the steep slope. It was Jenny Hallum, the woman on whom he had billeted Mildred Jarman.

  Her lungs were near to bursting from exertion and emotion.

  ‘Sir, it’s that girl, it’s Mildred, sir. Sir, I’ve done all you asked me to. I couldn’t have looked after her better if she’d been my own daughter. But yesterday and today she’s not been herself, sir. I thought you’d have noticed it yourself when you came.’

  ‘What’s happened, Mrs Hallum?’

  ‘She’s gone back to the Hall, sir – and taken all her things with her.’

  ‘When was this?’

  ‘Not half an hour ago, Sergeant Brunt. I got here as fast as I could.’

  ‘And she actually told you where she was going?’

  ‘Back to the Hall, sir. Back to Captain Kingsey. They’ll kill her, sir. I know they’ll kill her – just like they did the other one.’

  Potter was already looking back up the Clough, ready to go.

  ‘I think you may be mistaken, Mrs Hallum – about the other girl, too.’

  ‘Eh?’

  She had not heard him. A new ripple of noisy excitement had run through the crowd, who were clearing a space for the Beresfords’ triumphant arrival.

  A crusty old veteran detective had once told Brunt that his system was to make a list of everyone even obliquely connected with a case and then sit down and try to imagine each in turn playing the principal role at every stage of the crime, from the preparation of it to the deed itself to the cover-up, the evasion and the final curtain. It was an unscientific method, subjective, capricious indeed, but Brunt had occasionally tried indulging in the ritual. It whiled away the i
dle hours that were a feature of most cases, and sometimes it let in an unexpected shaft of light from the outside.

  Suppose, now, that Mildred Jarman were the culprit. Could it make sense? Pre-eminently, the girl did not know her own mind. She had a fierce resolve – one might almost call it an arbitrary one – to resist the blandishments of such as Kingsey; and yet she was sorely tempted. She had been hypnotised by the studded door in the long corridor. So might she not also have become insanely jealous of Amy Harrington?

  Might she have killed her for her effrontery of stepping into her shoes at the very moment when she was raging at herself for missing her opportunities? She was physically capable of murder: a strong girl, whilst Amy Harrington had always been spoken of as a poor, fragile thing. But how could she have spirited the body away? Alone, she could never have managed the winze in Brindley’s adit. But could any person, working singly? Might she have worked hand in glove with Fletcher? Or Mrs Palfreyman?

  Beresford drew up the horses in the space that the crowd had cleared. The effigy of the Rector slipped sideways in its saddle. It was a ruthless caricature, a recognisable resemblance, except for round, rudimentary, unrealistic eyes. The representation of Kingsey, on the other hand, was startlingly realistic: a flamboyant dressing-gown, a pill-box cap with a red tassel hanging down by one ear. The Beresford women were handy with their needles; but then they had had longer to work on the Captain; the decision to burn the Rector had been an after-thought, not made until the sexton was given his orders to dig up Thos’s potato patch.

  ‘Big moment for Thos, this is, Sergeant Brunt.’

  This was the haggard story-teller from the Rake: Sammy Nall.

  ‘Yes.’

  Brunt did not want to become entangled in ancient mariners’ tales at this juncture. Potter was still looking at him with anxious lack of understanding.

  ‘You vexed old Thos, in the Rake, last night, you know.’

  ‘I suppose I did.’

  ‘You should never have mentioned those traps of his, up by Brindley’s.’

  Potter had moved closer to Brunt and was trying to speak to him in a side-mouth whisper.

  ‘Tom, I think one of us ought to go up to Kingsey’s place. If you’re so keen to see this out, I’ll go—’

  Beresford was having clumsy-fingered trouble with one of the buckles that was holding the Rector in the saddle.

  ‘A sore point with Thos, those traps were.’

  Which was what decided Brunt to give Sammy Nall his full attention.

  ‘Why was that, then, Sammy? Why were they a sore point with him?’

  ‘Well, you see, he’d been warned off the warren.’

  ‘Warned off? By whom? By Kingsey?’

  But Kingsey had specifically denied that he wanted to interfere with Beresford’s poaching. By Fletcher, then, purporting to speak on Kingsey’s behalf?

  Sammy Nall spat contemptuously by the side of his feet.

  ‘No – not by Kingsey.’

  He was too good a story-teller; you had to wait for the point. Potter made an impatient movement, wanting to be, if necessary, a solitary errant.

  ‘Not Kingsey. By Lois and Dora.’

  ‘Good God!’

  ‘Shall I be on my way, then, Tom?’ Potter had not been paying attention to Sammy.

  ‘No. There’ll be work for us here any minute now.’

  ‘Lois and Dora, you see, they’d been up to Brindley’s Quarter, and seen what was going on there.’

  The Rector was safely off the horse now, and a gang of men were chairing him above their heads.

  ‘Thos was giving the girl a bit of learning that she’d never got out of all the books she’d read. What he called giving his playmate a little lesson. Showing her a trick or two when it came to making up to the Captain. Of course, if you saw it at a distance, you might get the wrong impression. We all knew Thos was enjoying himself, in his quiet little way. Silly old bugger ought to have grown out of that sort of thing by his age, I reckon.’

  ‘And those two caught him at it?’

  ‘Crept up on him while he was showing the lass how to move in close to a man’s shoulder. They told him what they’d do with him if they ever caught him within half a mile of the Hall again. And they said they’d look after those traps of his up in the warren from then on.’

  And had neglected them almost since the day. Even a couple as hard-boiled as that pair had fought shy of going back to Brindley’s Quarter, after something that had happened there. They had even offered, through Thos, to make a home for the girl. Perhaps they had told him that they would rather have her where they could see her. And then they had gone up there on the morning of April 23rd to meet her and help her carry her bag …

  The effigy of Captain Kingsey was now off its horse, and the Beresfords themselves were the central figures in the group that was carrying him. Brunt looked with fascination at the head of the figure, which was lolling un-naturally to one side, as if the neck they had made it was not strong enough for the weight it was carrying. When he had paid his first call on the Beresford women, there had been a row going on – he had heard it through the door – because the head had come off something or other.

  ‘Come on, Albert, those things mustn’t burn.’

  He tried to break into the group, but Beresford started fighting as soon as he saw an attempt to break up his precious ceremony. The irony of it was that he still probably did not know for sure what had happened to the girl. But did he suspect? Had he suspected ever since Brunt had mentioned those traps to him? He flailed round now, catching Brunt a back-hander that could have knocked him out if it had contacted properly. But it glanced relatively painlessly off Brunt’s cheek-bone. Meanwhile, the women were struggling desperately to get the effigy on the fire. There was no hope any more of placing the Captain ceremonially on his throne: the crowd was now milling round between the cortège and the fire itself.

  But Dora, taking advantage of her height, succeeded in raising the grotesque doll high above her head and passing it over the crowd to another group who were nearer the fire.

  ‘Albert – that’s the one – it mustn’t burn—’

  But Brunt no longer knew where Potter was. The crowd had hemmed him in now, had jostled him away from the sisters, his arms wedged against his sides. They were all beside themselves with anger, thinking him a spoil-sport. It was impossible to try to tell them anything.

  Someone got a flame to the brushwood and the whole construction was suddenly ignited with an inrush of air. The effigy was thrown the final few yards. Brunt could not see over the shoulders that surrounded him.

  Then something else seemed to happen to the crowd – a telepathic moment of hush and a sudden diversion of their attention. Someone else’s understanding had dawned – someone else now saw in a moment of clarity exactly what was behind it all. Jack Plant had broken out of the crush, plunged through the rope of roasting vermin, half pulled and half flung the effigy clear. It lay now to one side of the fire, small flames dancing along the material in several places – about an ankle and up one arm. And the hessian of the face was crawling with red sparks, like a bird’s-eye view of advancing infantry. There was a strong smell of melting tar. Amy Harrington was preserved in it.

  The crowd stood back from the heat of the fire. The three principals were now isolated in its glow: Lois with her cruel illusion of a smile; Dora, terror as well as bile now suffusing her craggy features. And between them stood Thos, overwhelmed by a pallid sickness as understanding came to him, too.

  Jack Plant beat out the flames that were picking at the figure. Potter stooped with his jack-knife and tore open the torso. Its withered content was not immediately recognisable as a human body. The crowd edged closer. And then by some miracle of mass awareness, the whisper went round. Those in the front tried to push backwards; those behind tried to thrust nearer.

  Beresford looked first at Dora, then at Lois, then at Dora again. And then his arms shot out sideways. He brought the two w
omen’s heads together in front of his chest with a crash that stunned them both; it was a matter of utter indifference to him whether he had broken their skulls or not. For a moment he stood clutching them by their hair – an act of immense control and strength, for his frame did not sway as he supported their sagging bodies. Then he opened out his fingers and they fell in an uncouth huddle of limbs in front of him.

  The rest was not easy. It was not easy getting two prisoners of that kind back into town from Piper’s Fold. But amongst their effects, Brunt and Potter were carrying handcuffs and a short length of chain. The volunteer escort was a strong one.

  ‘I ought to have been on to it just that sooner than I was,’ Brunt said. ‘I ought never to have let them get a light to that fire. It was thinking about Mildred Jarman that put me on a cross-trail.’

  ‘But why did they preserve the corpse?’ Potter asked. ‘Surely there was somewhere they could have lost it, some-where underground between Brindley’s and Benedict’s?’

  ‘Albert, I don’t claim to understand those women. We don’t even have to, do we? Our job’s done, the lawyers take over and we, with ordinary good luck, can get back to normal, wholesome villainy. But I think, once they had a corpse on their hands, they were as terrified as the rest of mankind would have been. They caused an avalanche when they were moving the body up out of the cavern, and it must have called on every superstition in their heritage. I think they probably became obsessed by that body. If they had left it in the mine, someone would have found it sooner or later. Remember: Thos would be forever on the look-out. Once the word got round that you and I had been in Brindley’s, there were new tales – about the Old Man, up at Benedict’s. That would be Thos, exploring on his own account.’

  ‘In that case, he must have found the tar-barrel, and he ought to have guessed.’

  ‘But not enough to be absolutely certain – any more than I was myself. Perhaps he did not really want to be certain. There are some things that a man would rather not know for sure.’

  Brunt began to undress, a signal to Potter that it was time he made off to his own bedroom.