Noose for a Lady

by Gerald Verner

  ‘Oh,’ she said, ‘Oh, really … to prove Mrs. Hallam’s innocence … indeed … I thought it was all settled?’

  ‘It seems to have given you rather a shock, Miss Ginch,’ said Gale.

  ‘Well, naturally,’ she compressed her thin lips. ‘You see — I thought … we all thought that it must be Mrs. Hallam. Who else could it be?’

  ‘Perhaps, you could suggest someone?’ said Gale.

  ‘Me? Oh, no, Mr. Gale. Of course, so many people hated poor Mr. Hallam, but I don’t see how any of them could have had the opportunity.’

  ‘Did they?’ said Gale, quickly. ‘That’s very interesting.’

  ‘Oh, yes indeed,’ she hurried on. ‘Mrs. Langdon-Humphreys, Major Fergusson,

  Doctor Evershed — even the dear vicar disliked him.’

  ‘Why?’ Gale snapped the question.

  ‘Dear me, I think you’d better ask Mr. Upcott that,’ replied Miss Ginch, shooting the little man a malicious glance. ‘I’m sure he would know better than I would. I really must be running along. I have to leave these books at the Vicarage, you know, and my chickens will be waiting for their little meal. I forgot to give them their breakfast this morning — so remiss of me.’

  ‘One moment, Miss Ginch,’ said Gale, as she was turning away, ‘Did you hate John Hallam too?’

  She caught her breath. ‘Oh, no,’ she replied. ‘I could never be so wicked as to hate anyone, Mr. Gale. We are taught to love our neighbours, however great the provocation. I must go to my chickens … I can’t bear to think of them being hungry, poor things.’

  She gave a little bird-like nod and tripped away. Robert Upcott looked after her and shrugged his shoulders.

  ‘Fantastic, isn’t she? And so malicious. Fancy — just fancy — suggesting that I could tell you why people hated Hallam …’

  ‘Can’t you, Mr. Upcott?’ asked Gale.

  ‘My dear fellow, of course not. How should I know? I didn’t hate the poor man … ’

  The clock in the square tower of the church chimed the quarter and Upcott, almost with a breath of relief, seized the opportunity it offered.

  ‘Good gracious me, is that the time? I mustn’t stop here gossiping another second. Don’t forget this afternoon. I’m so looking forward to it … Three-thirty, you know. Au revoir, I must positively rush…’

  He beamed on them, waved his hand daintily, and hurried away.

  ‘Hell’s bells!’ grunted Gale. ‘What a dreadful little pansy.’

  Jill laughed. ‘Poor Mr. Upcott,’ she said. ‘He was married once. His wife ran away and left him.’

  ‘I don’t blame her,’ said Martin.

  ‘He’s rather sensitive about it,’ Jill went on. ‘People laughed — it was rather unkind. She ran away with some man, but nobody ever found out who he was — not even Mr. Upcott.’

  ‘That Ginch woman’s a pretty queer specimen,’ said Martin, ‘something a little mental there, I should think.’

  ‘Repressed spinsterhood, that’s all,’ said Jill with a twinkle in her eyes.

  Simon Gale pulled out his pipe and began to fill it from a disreputable pouch. ‘I wonder if that is all,’ he remarked.

  She looked at him quickly. ‘You’re not suggesting…?’ she began.

  ‘No, I’m not,’ he broke in. ‘Is there a decent pub in this place?’

  ‘There’s the Hand and Flower in the High Street.’

  Come on then, let’s go there,’ he said. ‘I feel in need of beer — lots and lots of beer…’

  *

  The Hand and Flower was one of those pubs in which you feel instantly at home.

  There was nothing elaborate about it. It possessed only one bar, but that was comfortable, with a comfort that more pretentious places of the kind might have envied.

  When Jill, Simon Gale and Martin entered the place, the bar was empty. Simon ordered drinks and, when these were brought by the smiling landlord, he swallowed half the contents of his tankard at a draught.

  ‘Ah!’ he remarked, smacking his lips, ‘that’s the best beer I’ve tasted for a long time. Now, let’s see where we’ve got so far.’

  ‘Not very far, Simon,’ said Martin.

  ‘And today’s Sunday,’ put in Jill, ‘Sunday, Simon. Only five more days if we’re to do any good.’

  ‘I know, I know,’ said Gale. ‘We’ve started the ball rolling, anyway. The reason we’re here will be all over the village by this afternoon.’

  ‘It was a shock to them, you know,’ said Martin. ‘They really think we’re on to something.’

  ‘That’s what we want them to think. It’ll jerk our poisoning friend out of his sense of security.’

  ‘Supposing it doesn’t? What then?’ asked Jill.

  ‘I refuse to suppose anything of the kind,’ answered Simon, draining the rest of his beer. ‘We’re going to pull this off. Get that firmly fixed in your head and keep it there. Hi, landlord — the same again, please.’

  ‘Oh, not for me, Simon,’ protested Jill.

  ‘Nonsense, it’ll do you good.’

  ‘Everybody hasn’t your capacity, Simon,’ said his brother.

  ‘Drink up and don’t argue!’ retorted Gale. He pushed his empty tankard across the bar. ‘Fill that up to be going on with, landlord…’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ said the landlord.

  ‘Now listen,’ continued Gale, dropping his voice. ‘We got on to something very odd this morning…’

  ‘Odd?’

  ‘Yes. You must have noticed it. All those people we met had one thing in common — they all disliked Hallam intensely. Why?’

  ‘I’m afraid father wasn’t very popular.’

  ‘This was more than unpopularity — it was almost hatred. Mrs. Langdon-Humphreys, Upcott, the Ginch woman, Vanessa — they all reacted in the same way when Hallam’s name was mentioned.’

  ‘I don’t know about Vanessa…’ said Martin, doubtfully.

  ‘Oh, yes. She was the same as the others — only she didn’t show it so plainly. Upcott was definitely afraid of something — you saw that, didn’t you? It was in his eyes…’

  ‘When Miss Ginch suggested you should ask him why everybody hated Hallam. Is that what you mean?’

  ‘And when he heard why we’d come here. Miss Ginch was as bad as the rest, although she denied it when I asked her point blank. And there are others who felt the same way about Hallam. You remember what she said?’

  ‘I wouldn’t take much notice of anything Miss Ginch says,’ said Jill. ‘She’s very spiteful.’

  ‘Women of her type always are,’ said Gale. ‘She’s the ideal anonymous letter writer. Repressed, lonely — watching other people who live normal lives and hating them for it?’

  ‘The same type that breeds the secret poisoner, in fact,’ remarked Martin.

  ‘Sometimes. You know, I’m convinced that if we could find the reason why all these people hated Hallam, we’d be well on the way…’ He broke off. The door had opened to admit a small, wizened faced, furtive man, roughly dressed and grimy. The landlord, polishing glasses, saw the newcomer and leaned across the bar.

  ‘You can get out, Rigg,’ he called, angrily. ‘We don’t want your kind in here.’

  ‘Why?’ demanded the man called Rigg in a surly tone. ‘My money’s as good as other people’s, ain’t it?’

  ‘Yer money may be good enough, but you ain’t,’ said the landlord. ‘Now get outside an’ don’t try an’ show yer nose in ’ere again, see?’

  ‘Hell’s bells, what’s going on?’ muttered Gale.

  ‘That’s Jonas Rigg,’ whispered Jill.

  ‘This is a public ’ouse, ain’t it?’ said Rigg. ‘If I want a pint o’ beer an’ I’ve got the money ter pay fer it, I’m entitled…’

  ‘You’ll get no beer here,’ answered the landlord. ‘Nor nothing else neither. We don’t serve gaolbirds, so the quicker you take yerself off the better.’

  ‘It ain’t right,’ whined the man. ‘Just ’cos a chap gets in trouble o
ver a bit of poachin’.’

  ‘It weren’t that, an’ you know it,’ said the landlord. ‘I wouldn’t ’old it against no one fer ’elpin’ themselves to a rabbit er two, nor to a pheasant er so, fer that matter. But I won’t ’ave thieves in the place, see … ’

  ‘I never pinched nothin’. It was all lies an’ perjury … ’

  ‘The magistrates give yer three months fer it, any’ow,’ said the landlord. ‘You’re a bad lot, Rigg, an’ I don’t want you hanging about ’ere, see? Now, clear out afore I come round an’ put you out … ’

  ‘Afraid of upsettin’ the gentry, I s’pose?’ Rigg’s mouth curled in a sneer. ‘Huh! I don’t go around poisonin’ people like some I could put a name to…’

  ‘That’s enough of that,’ cried the landlord. ‘You get the other side o’ the door afore there’s any trouble…’

  ‘Trouble!’ echoed the poacher, and spat. ‘I could make trouble enough fer some people, if I’d a mind to. Oh, yes — an’ a ’eap o’ trouble too … ’

  ‘Get out!’ shouted the landlord. ‘Go on, get out!’

  He raised the flap of the counter and the little wizened man scuttled to the door.

  ‘Awright, awright, I’m goin’,’ he snarled. ‘You just wait, that’s all — just you wait an’ see…’

  He went out slamming the door behind him.

  ‘Nasty specimen,’ remarked Simon Gale. ‘Sort of local bad character, I suppose?’

  ‘Yes, he lives in a broken-down old caravan near Quarry Wood,’ said Jill. ‘He’s always getting into some trouble or other — poaching mostly.’

  ‘This last seems to have been something more serious,’ said Martin.

  ‘It was,’ she answered. ‘He stole a bicycle from Latt’s Farm. He can’t have been out of prison long.’

  ‘They gave him three months,’ Simon Gale looked suddenly thoughtful. ‘Three months,’ he repeated slowly. ‘When did he steal that bicycle, Jill?’

  When?’ She wrinkled her brows. ‘Oh, it must have been the night that…’

  ‘The night that Hallam was poisoned?’ said Gale, sharply.

  ‘Yes, it was,’ she looked at him quickly. ‘You’re not thinking that Rigg could have…?’

  ‘No, but he might have seen something if he was near Easton Knoll that night.’

  ‘What could he have seen?’

  ‘We’re assuming that someone came to see Hallam after Maggie had given him that whisky and milk, and gone to bed, aren’t we?’

  ‘You mean, Rigg might know who it was?’ said Jill.

  ‘I thought he meant Maggie,’ said Martin.

  ‘He said: “I could make trouble enough for some people, if I’d a mind to”,’ said Gale. ‘That couldn’t have referred to Maggie. Nobody could make any more trouble for her. He meant someone else.’

  ‘Simon, I believe we’ve stumbled on something tangible at last,’ declared Martin.

  ‘Yes — I feel that a visit to Mr. Jonas Rigg might be very propitious…’

  Somebody came quickly into the bar. Jill said in a low voice: ‘That’s Major Fergusson. Miss Ginch mentioned him.’

  Gale shifted so that he could see the newcomer. He was a stocky, broad-shouldered man, dressed in plus fours. His face was lean and weather-beaten but there was a strained look about his rather deep-set eyes.

  ‘I’d like to meet him. See if you can get him to join us,’ said Gale.

  ‘I’ll try,’ said Jill. ‘Good morning, Major Fergusson.’ she called.

  ‘Good morning, Miss Hallam,’ replied Fergusson curtly. His voice was deep with a slight Scots accent.

  ‘Come over here,’ said Jill, ‘Simon, this is Major Fergusson — Major Fergusson,

  Simon Gale and his brother Martin.’

  ‘How do you do?’ said Simon.

  ‘What’ll you have, Major Fergusson?’ said Martin.

  ‘That’s very kind of ye — I’ll have a whisky, please,’ said Fergusson.

  ‘The same again, landlord, and a double John Haig,’ said Martin to the landlord.

  ‘Comin’ up, sir,’ said that worthy cheerily.

  ‘I’ll not be able to stay very long, I’m afraid,’ said Fergusson. ‘I only just dropped in.’

  We’re all going after this,’ said Gale. ‘It’s very pretty round here, isn’t it?’

  ‘Aye,’ the other agreed, ‘there are some lovely spots. Are you staying here?’

  ‘Yes — at Easton Knoll. We came down last night with Miss Hallam.’

  ‘Easton Knoll’s a fine house,’ said Fergusson.

  ‘A beautiful old place,’ agreed Simon. ‘I suppose you knew John Hallam?’

  The muscles of Fergusson’s face seemed to tighten. The expression of the deep-set eyes hardened.

  ‘Aye, I knew him,’ he said, shortly.

  ‘It was a terrible thing to have happened, wasn’t it?’

  ‘I suppose it was,’ Fergusson’s eyes flickered over them and then turned to the door. Gale had the impression that he was seeking some means of escape. ‘I feel very sorry for Mrs. Hallam.’

  ‘We think there’s been a mistake,’ Gale continued. ‘As a matter of fact that’s why we’ve come down here.’

  ‘You mean — she didn’t do it after all?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Is it just something you think, or have you any evidence?’

  ‘Well,’ replied Gale, cautiously, ‘you can take it that we have a pretty good reason for thinking so.’

  ‘If it wasn’t Mrs. Hallam, who have you in mind?’

  ‘I think it would be better if we didn’t mention any names at this stage,’ said Gale.

  ‘Maybe.’ Fergusson rubbed his chin with a shaky hand. ‘Well, I’d be glad to see Mrs. Hallam released. I shouldn’t like to think of anybody being punished for killing Hallam.’

  Why do you say that?’ asked Gale.

  ‘Because if ever a man deserved to die, he did,’ answered Fergusson, and there was a bitter hatred in his voice. ‘My sympathies are all with the person who killed him.’

  ‘You’re the second person to say that today,’ said Gale.

  ‘You’ll find a good many more, I’ve no doubt.’

  ‘Why, Major Fergusson?’ asked Jill. ‘Why did everybody dislike my father so much?’

  He looked at her sharply.

  ‘Do you not know?’ he said. ‘Well, it’s no business of mine to tell you, I’m thinking. Maybe you’ll find out. I don’t want to discuss Hallam or anything about him. Good day to you, gentlemen — good day, Miss Hallam.’

  He turned abruptly and walked out of the bar.

  ‘Well!’ exclaimed Martin with a grimace. ‘What’s the matter with him? He’s left his whisky.’

  ‘We rattled him,’ said Gale. ‘His nerves are in a pretty bad state.’

  ‘He was badly wounded in the war,’ said Jill. ‘Something to do with his head. I think it troubles him a lot.’

  ‘I don’t think it’s that that’s troubling him,’ said Gale. ‘I should say he had something on his mind.’

  ‘A guilty conscience, eh?’ said Martin.

  ‘It might be,’ Gale looked doubtful. ‘He’s not the right type, though, for a poisoner. I can’t imagine him killing anyone that way, or letting someone else suffer for it, if he had.’

  ‘He’s definitely another Hallam hater, isn’t he?’ said Martin.

  ‘The list grows, doesn’t it?’ Simon swirled the beer in his tankard and took a long drink. ‘I wonder how many more we shall find?’

  ‘Doctor Evershed, according to Miss Ginch,’ said Jill.

  ‘And the vicar, too,’ Gale swallowed the rest of his beer. ‘It’s the ‘why’ I want to know. What did Hallam do to all these people?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said, shaking her head.

  ‘How far away is Quarry Wood?’ he asked abruptly.

  ‘About fifteen minutes’ walk from here,’ she said.

  ‘We’ve time before lunch, then,’ said Gale. ‘Finish your drinks
and we’ll go and find Jonas Rigg. Perhaps he’ll have something interesting to tell us.’

  Jonas Rigg’s caravan stood in a small clearing on the fringe of the wood. It was a battered and disreputable looking affair, once painted cream, but now a dingy, nondescript colour from dirt and long exposure to the weather. The wheels were broken so that one side of it had had to be propped up on a pile of bricks. Weeds grew thickly underneath, and there was all kinds of rubbish scattered around it.

  ‘Does Rigg live there all the year round?’ asked Martin, when they came in sight of the unsavoury looking place.

  ‘I suppose so,’ said Jill. ‘I’ve never heard of him living anywhere else.’

  ‘A bit draughty in the winter, I should imagine,’ said Simon. ‘There isn’t a whole pane of glass in any of the windows.’

  ‘The place looks deserted,’ said Martin. ‘No sign of life anywhere.’

  ‘Perhaps he’s inside,’ said Gale. ‘Let’s try the door.’

  He mounted the broken steps and rattled the handle.

  ‘It’s locked,’ he said.

  ‘Try knocking,’ suggested Martin.

  Simon thumped on the door with his fist, but there was no reply.

  ‘He can’t be there,’ said Jill.

  ‘No, most likely having been refused beer at the local, he’s gone farther afield/ said Gale.

  ‘It’s not much good waiting, is it?’ she said. ‘He may be hours … ’

  ‘We’ll have to come back later/ said Simon. ‘Pity. Can you see anything through that window, Martin?’

  ‘No, it’s boarded up inside,’ answered his brother, craning his neck.

  ‘Now then,’ shouted a rough voice angrily, ‘what are you doin’ there, eh? That’s my property, that is.’

  They looked round. Jonas Rigg appeared from among the trees and advanced towards them.

  ‘We want a word with you, Rigg,’ said Gale.

  ‘I don’t want no words with anyone,’ snarled the man. ‘Go on — you clear off — all of yer.’

  ‘There’s no need to adopt that tone, my man,’ snapped Gale.

  ‘Your man,’ retorted Rigg ‘Your man? I ain’t your man, nor anyone else’s man. I’m me own man, an’ I’ll adopt what tone I like. This is where I live, an’ I don’t want you or anyone else, snoopin’ round.’

  ‘I merely want to ask you a few questions,’ said Gale.