Callers for Dr Morelle

by Ernest Dudley

  Miss Frayle glanced at the lawn, its green faded to patching browns by the hot summer that was ending, which sloped down to the river. Beyond some trees she could see the water pouring over the weir in a cascade of froth. Her eyes travelled across the river to the old church, which stood almost opposite close to the water’s edge, shaded from the sunlight by yew trees, dark and sombre.

  ‘That looks like it, Dr. Morelle,’ she said.

  Dr. Morelle turned at the door of the hotel and looked in the direction Miss Frayle was pointing. His hooded gaze rested on the tiny church for a few moments. ‘That we shall ascertain after we have had some tea,’ he said.

  He pushed open the glazed door and followed Miss Frayle into the hotel. Presently she and Dr. Morelle found themselves in a corner of the lounge, with tea being set before them.

  Dr. Morelle’s visit to Hatford was on account of several reports which had lately reached him, concerning the grave of a well-known author of criminological works, who had died some five years before. His name was Professor Kerr, and according to these reports his grave had fallen into disrepair, and had become very neglected.

  Dr. Morelle had been aware that the professor had no family or relatives, although there had been one or two friends whom he had understood were supposed to have been responsible for the upkeep of the grave. He had made a number of inquiries among people who had known Kerr in London, but could obtain no satisfactory information. The result was that he had decided to investigate the matter for himself.

  Dr. Morelle and Professor Kerr had been good friends, they had worked together on one or two scientific papers. Kerr had been a great admirer of Dr. Morelle, and though their paths had separated towards the end of the former’s life, and they had seen each other infrequently, Dr. Morelle had always held a warm place in his heart for his former colleague.

  So on this bright late September afternoon, Dr. Morelle, accompanied by Miss Frayle, had turned the long bonnet of the Duesenberg out of Harley Street and westwards past Kew, through Staines and along the road towards Basingstoke, and into Hampshire beside a river, along which ran woods whose green was beginning to turn to bronze, and so to the little market town of Hatford.

  The church where Professor Kerr was buried was, so Dr. Morelle had been informed, on the other side of the river across the old narrow suspension bridge; there the grave was, in the tiny churchyard. The Weir Hotel where Dr. Morelle had stopped for tea lay back from the road a few yards before reaching the bridge.

  After their tea Dr. Morelle and Miss Frayle went out of the hotel and walked over a narrow footbridge which ran beside the suspension bridge. The sun was dipping behind the wooded hills as they came over the bridge, turned right and entered the churchyard.

  It was an old Norman-towered church, overgrown with ivy and creeper; the churchyard itself was ragged with tall grass and seemed only adequately well-kept, almost every tombstone and gravestone was covered with moss, so that the names on them were almost always undecipherable.

  Dr. Morelle and Miss Frayle walked round the churchyard trying to see a stone which by its comparatively new appearance might mark the spot where Professor Kerr lay buried. Although they searched carefully among the graves, there was no sign of the one which Dr. Morelle was seeking.

  Presently he and Miss Frayle turned away from the graveyard, and went into the church itself. Outside a woman’s bicycle leaned against the wall, but inside the church there was no one to be found whom they could ask for information concerning the whereabouts of the professor’s last resting-place.

  Dr. Morelle and Miss Frayle stood for some moments in the cool gloom of the church. The air was heavy with the scent of incense as they looked around, hoping to find some reference to the particular grave in the church records, but there was nothing to help them. Presently they went out into the early evening.

  Dr. Morelle was recalling again that the information he had gone on in London had not been completely reliable, it was only surmise which had prompted him to seek out this church on the river-bank at Hatford. A frown darkened his gaunt face and his lips were tight with determination. He was making up his mind that he would not return to London until his quest was successfully concluded. What had started off as an errand of respect for a dead colleague had now become a challenge to his perseverance.

  ‘Shouldn’t we go back to the hotel,’ Miss Frayle said. She could not refrain a faint sigh, this was hardly her idea of spending a nice late summer evening, mooching around old churchyards, looking for a lost grave. She had seen Dr. Morelle’s face and read his expression correctly. ‘I believe,’ she went on, ‘that there is a place near called Little Tiplow, and it was suggested by someone in London, I can’t remember who it was, that Professor Kerr might be buried there.’

  Dr. Morelle recollected that his old friend had, in fact, lived in the village of Little Tiplow at the time of his death.

  ‘That notion had already occurred to me,’ he said. ‘We might find someone at the hotel who could put us on the right track.’

  They went back the way they had come, over the narrow footbridge across the river. They stood for a minute watching the boats passing underneath, a slim, fragile-looking racing skiff flashed by, a motor-boat chugged slowly below in the opposite direction. Further down the stream Miss Frayle watched a white swan move lazily over the green waters. Dusk was beginning to fall and Miss Frayle drew her light coat about her against the chill in the air, now that the sun had gone.

  Back in the hotel, Dr. Morelle found the cashier behind the inquiries desk, she was a middle-aged woman, and he asked her if she knew anything about the grave concerned. She was unable to help him, but as Dr. Morelle turned away he came face-to-face with an old waiter, at the same moment that the woman behind the desk, seeing him, asked him if he had any information which could help Dr. Morelle.

  ‘Yes,’ the old chap said. ‘I remember him being buried down here, he used to live nearby. But it wasn’t at that church,’ he waved the tray he was carrying in the direction of the river, ‘it was the church over at Little Tiplow where he was buried.’

  Little Tiplow was a tiny village about two miles distant, and Dr. Morelle and Miss Frayle got into the Duesenberg and drove over the bridge and through the town. Dr. Morelle had switched on the car’s side lights, street-lamps came alight and lights were popping in the shops and windows of the houses as dusk fell over Hatford.

  Some minutes later the Duesenberg swung past Hatford Station and went on through the station yard, and continued along another road which wound uphill a short distance. Dr. Morelle turned into a rough-surfaced lane, and after about a hundred yards the lane turned left into a wider road and the car sped on past an old inn, where a light was swinging from underneath its sign.

  Miss Frayle couldn’t catch the name of the inn, though she screwed up her eyes behind her horn-rimmed glasses. She remembered the old waiter when he was directing Dr. Morelle to the churchyard, mentioning that the road went past an inn on the right. So Dr. Morelle was on the right road, not that she expected him to have mistaken his way, she reflected. It was not like Dr. Morelle to get lost.

  The Duesenberg swung onto the road for Little Tiplow. Fields stretched away into the distance, the evening mist was beginning to come up from the river, and drift across like a company of wraiths and into the woods over on the right. Now the Duesenberg’s great headlamps were switched on and their twin powerful beams sliced the night.

  Presently to their left rose up a dark cluster of trees. ‘That is Witches’ Wood,’ Dr. Morelle told Miss Frayle, and chuckled a little to himself as he felt her shudder.

  They turned into a long, gloomy tunnel which ran under a railway, and which seemed to continue through the hillside for about half-a-mile. The car’s headlamps bored through the darkness and the echo of its engines came back eerily to Miss Frayle’s ears. She murmured a prayer of thanks when they were out of it, and driving up the road ahead, which was now pale in the gloom.

  They turned aga
in, until they were running along another road which lay parallel with the river. It gleamed darkly and they passed a cottage on the bank, with a large flat-bottomed boat moored alongside. This was Mill Ferry, Miss Frayle presumed, and once again recalling that the waiter at the hotel had mentioned it. Once again she marvelled to herself at the manner in which Dr. Morelle had kept on the route he’d been given.

  Further on she could see the mill itself, rising tall and gaunt. They left it on their right, and now they were heading for Little Tiplow itself.

  Little Tiplow turned out to be composed of only a mere handful of houses and a church. Lights were gleaming behind the curtains of the cottage-windows as the Duesenberg’s headlights swept through the village and pulled up outside the lych-gate of the church, low-built and greyish against the night sky.

  Dr. Morelle took a large torch from underneath the dashboard and they made their way to the gate in the shadow of its porch. At first it appeared to be locked, and then Dr. Morelle gave one end a push and it swung open on its axis in the centre, the other end nearly knocking Miss Frayle off her feet. Slowly, in the increasing darkness, Miss Frayle followed Dr. Morelle into the churchyard. Some gravestones shimmered palely; somewhere an owl was hooting. There was no moon, only the light of the torch to guide them, as they made their way around the churchyard. Miss Frayle stumbled over old gravestones, and found herself a trifle hysterically apologizing, as if those who lay beneath might be disturbed by her jumping on them. Here again the graves were very old and covered with moss, and the names mostly indecipherable.

  Then Miss Frayle gave a cry and pointed to what appeared to be a comparatively new gravestone caught in the circle of light from the torch.

  ‘Dr. Morelle,’ she said, ‘perhaps that’s it.’

  Dr. Morelle went forward and now they saw that it was a large stone tilted towards their gaze. Unfortunately, however, the inscription on it read: Colonel Somebody-or-Other of the Scots Guards, and a very martial-looking sword could be seen above the inscription.

  Miss Frayle uttered a groan of disappointment which turned to a gasp of terror. In the darkness she suddenly felt something pushing against her ankle. She recoiled, but managed to force her glance downwards. It was a tubby grey cat brushing against her, purring loudly, its eyes gleaming yellow up at her. Miss Frayle smiled to herself at her timid fears, and bent and stroked the cat.

  She followed Dr. Morelle along the path back to the Duesenberg, and then Dr. Morelle saw a shadowy figure coming out from behind the vicarage which stood next to the church. It was a man who came into view and Dr. Morelle paused to ask the newcomer if he knew if the man they sought was buried in the churchyard.

  In the light from Dr. Morelle’s torch Miss Frayle saw that the man’s hair was well slicked down, and he was wearing a collar and tie, obviously, she decided, on his way to a local dance, or to the village inn for an evening’s amusement. At once he answered Dr. Morelle’s query.

  ‘Yes, I do remember the name; but he’s not buried here. I think you’ll find his grave in the cemetery. That’s new, leastways only ten years old or so, it’s on the other side of the village.’

  He spoke with a pleasant burr, and as he finished there was a movement behind him, and another figure approached. He was a farm-labourer, and he confirmed what Dr. Morelle had just been told. The two men directed Dr. Morelle, the cemetery was about only a mile away it seemed, and he got into the car, Miss Frayle beside him.

  He reversed the Duesenberg, the two men watching him with interest, then he set off back through the village. Miss Frayle was beginning to feel she’d had enough of graveyards for one evening, a cloud of increasingly dark depression was descending upon her, but she knew that any protest on her part would go unheeded by the saturnine figure beside her at the steering-wheel.

  They came to the beginning of what was no more than a cart-track, with wire-fencing either side.

  The moon had appeared low on the horizon, stars were beginning to twinkle in the sky. Dr. Morelle decided to stop the car, he was not quite sure of the condition of the way ahead, and so he switched off the engine and the headlights, and with Miss Frayle hanging onto his arm, he set off.

  There were two or three houses on either side of the cart-track, but still no sign of any cemetery. They came to a fork in the path, and with the idea that it looked the least rough of the two, Dr. Morelle took the right-hand fork. He and Miss Frayle went on for about fifty yards, and then a door of a cottage opened, and a man’s shadow appeared in the lighted doorway.

  ‘Are we right for the cemetery?’ Dr. Morelle asked.

  Dr. Morelle and Miss Frayle could feel the man’s eyes on them, and there was a moment’s hesitation before he answered.

  ‘No, you’re coming the wrong way,’ the man said. ‘You should have taken the other fork.’

  They returned the way they had come, and then took the left-hand fork, Dr. Morelle leading the way with the torch he had brought from the car, Miss Frayle close behind him, fearful she would lose him in the darkness. It was a rough track, riddled with cart-tracks, until suddenly it opened out into a small space, beyond which was a low gate. They went through the gate, and there they could dimly see the white shapes of recent gravestones.

  How were they to find which was the grave they wanted? Miss Frayle wondered. Everywhere the gravestones seemed to look alike. Then Miss Frayle heard a voice saying something about someone having left some flowers. It was a woman’s voice, Dr. Morelle had heard it too, and he called out: ‘Could you tell me which is Professor Kerr’s grave? I believe he is buried here.’

  There was a pause and then a squat, dumpy shape waddled out of the shadows. In the darkness they could make out the pale blob of a face with a wide smile, and a head covered in some sort of a black shawl. It was the same woman’s voice they had just heard that came to them now out of the gloom. Beyond her, Miss Frayle could make out another figure, no doubt that was who they had heard the woman talking to.

  ‘Yes,’ the dumpy woman said. ‘He’s here; if you like to follow me, I’ll show you where it is.’

  Dr. Morelle thanked her for her trouble, the woman said it was no trouble at all, she was only too glad to show him where the grave was. As Dr. Morelle followed Miss Frayle and the square woman down the path there was a sudden movement, and a figure rose up from the side of a grave.

  Instinctively Dr. Morelle turned the beam of his torch on the figure and in its light saw it was a dark-eyed, pale beautiful girl. She had obviously been kneeling at a grave. Dr. Morelle paused, as if he had the impression that she was about to speak to him, Miss Frayle thought. She too was impressed by the girl’s face. But the girl said nothing, and Dr. Morelle went on, Miss Frayle behind him.

  ‘Here it is,’ the woman said, a few moments later. She pointed to a white cross that stood behind a neat rectangle of gravel. On the cross was the professor’s name, suitably inscribed, and the date of his birth and death.

  Dr. Morelle questioned the woman and ascertained from her that the grave was, in fact, kept in good order, occasionally someone from Little Tiplow who had known Professor Kerr there, came over from time to time and put flowers on the grave. Dr. Morelle was completely reassured that there was no basis for the reports that Professor Kerr’s last resting-place was a patch of overgrown weeds, neglected and forgotten.

  Miss Frayle had by now lost interest in the grave, though she was glad that Dr. Morelle had finally found it, and that all was well with it; she was, in fact, much more intrigued by the young woman they had seen rising up from beside the grave at which she had been kneeling. Miss Frayle longed to ask the squat, dumpy woman with the odd shawl hood over her round face, about the girl. Who was she? Why was she there so late, in the darkness? Was it because she had become recently bereaved that she was there, praying at the grave of someone dear to her?

  But Miss Frayle asked the woman none of these things. Instead, she remained silent and after they had said good night to the woman she and Dr. Morelle returned t
o the car. Dr. Morelle expressed his satisfaction with the outcome of their journey as the Duesenberg bumped along the rough cart-track to the road. Miss Frayle murmured appropriately in reply.

  But as the Duesenberg headed through the village, on through Hatford and across the suspension-bridge, past the strings of gaily-coloured lights which now ornamented the Weir Hotel and were reflected in the river, Miss Frayle could still see on the screen of her mind the face of the girl in the graveyard.

  The car sped on to London, but Miss Frayle found she could not dismiss the girl’s haunting face from her thoughts.

  Chapter Eight

  Thelma Grayson stirred at the window. Down in the street the fat, bald proprietor of the little restaurant opposite was bowing a party of late patrons to the door, now the lights began to dim behind the net curtains as the shadows of the waiters moved around, clearing up. Presently, the glaring neon sign over the door went out.

  The sitting-room of the Charlotte Street flat was almost in darkness now, without the red and blue flashes from the neon that had shone on Thelma’s white face, set in taut, tragic lines, her long eyes grey haunted pools.

  She had been there in the darkness, without realizing the passing hours, now she switched on a standard-lamp and drew the curtains. The evening was beginning to end in Charlotte Street. Further down, across Oxford Street where the environs of Soho sprawled untidily, the night was young.

  She moved to a little writing-desk in the corner, and as she bent to the drawer her eyes met those of Julie staring at her, luminous and smiling, from the leather-framed photograph. Thelma hesitated momentarily, then her gaze went down to the drawer she had opened. She took out the revolver.

  It was cold to the touch of her pale slender fingers. It glinted up at her evilly, silky smooth and bluish-black. It was a Smith and Wesson Centennial, hammerless and pumping a .38 calibre cartridge. It wasn’t the newest pattern, made of all-aluminium alloy. It was quite heavy in her hand.