To his surprise it was Mrs Westbridge who reacted first.
‘Take it and welcome,’ she said, choking back a sob. ‘I know it wasn’t just an accident ... you see, he came round just for a minute before he died, and he was scared stiff ... struggling in the bed as if he was trying to climb up to get away from something ... please excuse me...’ She broke down and ran out of the room.
‘I’m sorry,’ Pollard said.
‘Best for it to come out if — if there’s anything to come,’ Mr Westbridge said heavily. ‘It’s right, what the wife said. I was there too. We’ll never forget that moment when he went, poor little chap...’
As Pollard walked into Littlechester police station an hour later he caught sight of Inspector Deeds about to leave the entrance hall and called to him.
‘Sir?’
Deeds, struck by the urgency in his voice, turned and came towards him with an enquiring expression.
‘Where in Manor Woods was the tree that kid Westbridge fell out of and killed himself?’
‘I can tell you which tree it actually was, sir. Just before we came to the clearing, we went round the side of a big oak. That was the one.’
Looking at him Pollard saw blank astonishment and intense curiosity on his face, held in check by years of professional training.
‘A possible development,’ he said. ‘Come along and hear about it if you’d care to.’
Chapter Eleven
The Curator of Littlechester Museum who had been called in by Superintendent Martin picked up a handful of pebbles from the biscuit tin and scrutinised them.
‘No problem whatever,’ he said. ‘Most of this lot are water-worn flints. The whole lot have been smoothed and rounded by being bashed against each other and against other stones by wave action. It’s been going on through millennia, possibly. These reddish and grey ones may have come from as far west as Devon and Cornwall: there’s a steady west-to-east drift along the south coast. It’s formed Chesil Bank along with other shingle spits.’
‘According to their owner these actually came from Chesil Bank,’ Pollard told him. ‘I’ll now ask you officially what is obviously a damn fool question, Mr Gribble. Could any of these pebbles possibly have originated in the Manor Woods at Woodcombe?’
‘Not possibly. If you find any of this type there, well, they were taken there for some reason. The Woodcombe hills are a dark-coloured shaley limestone: grey or greenish... The Super here will vouch for my discretion. Is it possible that these pebbles tie up in some way with the extraordinary recent happenings there?’
‘As the Super vouches for you, Mr Gribble,’ Pollard replied gravely, ‘I’ll go to the length of saying that I’m not ruling it out of court.’
‘That’s all you’re going to get from the Yard, old man,’ the Superintendent told the Curator. ‘Come along and have a drink, and leave them to digest your specialised information.’
When the two had gone off, Pollard said suddenly, ‘The kid must have been nifty with his fingers... You know,’ he went on, returning the catapult to the tin, ‘in the light of that old boy’s expert evidence I think there’s a possible explanation of how Robin Westbridge came to fall out of that tree and break his neck. A lot of country lads have catapults and are good shots with ’em. We know Robin was a bit of a loner and addicted to adventure stories. Trespassing in the Kenway-Potter woods and building a tree house there fits in, doesn’t it? I don’t think he could have been scared of Old Grim or he wouldn’t have dug himself in so near it. But to the average boy with a catapult it would have seemed a perfect target. My guess is that he sat in his tree house peppering it with pebbles and pretending that it was an invader from outer space or a dragon. Or even his teacher, perhaps. And then one day an observer comes along and spots what’s going on. Not an outraged antiquarian who says he’s going straight to the Manor to tell Rodney Kenway-Potter about it, but someone with an abnormal addiction to the remote past and its beliefs which has become focussed on Old Grim.’
Toye, concentrating intently though puzzled, looked up. ‘Mrs Rawlings?’
‘Of course.’
Characteristically Toye raised a severely practical issue. ‘But how could she have made him fall out of the tree? I don’t see her shinning up it and getting hold of him.’
‘As I told you, he regained consciousness just as he was dying, and according to the parents he was scared stiff and struggling as if he was trying to escape from somebody or something. It looks as though he was so frightened that his physical control went and he lost his balance, perhaps as he was scrambling up to a higher branch.’
‘You’ve no proof of any of this,’ Toye protested.
‘Not a scrap. And it’s probably impossible that we could ever prove conclusively that Rawlings was responsible for the kid’s death. And she might not have intended it, either. But for my own satisfaction I want the ground round the longstone combed to see if any pebbles like this lot are lying about. We won’t tackle it today as it’s Sunday and she’ll probably be at home. What price that pair of binoculars on her desk and the view of the clearing? The essential thing is not to alert her in any way.’
‘But if we could never get up a case against her over the boy’s death, what’s the point of spending time —’ Toye broke off suddenly and stared at Pollard.
‘I see you’re working round to it, old chap. Suppose I’m right, and Robin Westbridge came crashing down at her feet because she’d somehow scared the living daylights out of the poor little blighter? What would have been her reaction? It would depend on how dotty she was at that stage. If she believed that Old Grim was a manifestation of the Devil she’d have been triumphant, I suppose. It was proof that she’d been right all the time about the beastly stone, and a chosen instrument of vengeance for sacrilege... So what price the death of Edward Juke?’
Toye sat silent struggling to cope with ideas outside his previous experience.
‘Let’s recap the Tuke affair,’ Pollard went on. ‘He was alive up to the time that James Fordyce showed him the beginning of the path up to the clearing soon after six on April the twenty-third. We know that Rawlings took evening strolls up to Old Grim. She said in her statement to Deeds that she’d been up on the evening of Tuesday the twenty-second and found the longstone in its usual position. Factual recap over: now I’ll dismay you by some further speculation. It’s Wednesday evening and she goes up again. Either for a pleasant walk or to do homage to Old Grim or whatever. Or, because after her conversation with Edward Tuke in the Green Man at lunchtime she thinks he may decide to go up to indulge in a spot of vandalism for a rag... I had a good look at the back premises of the Fordyces’ bungalow when I trumped up an excuse to get us into the study the other day. The hedge between their back garden and Rawlings’s is close to the study window which would certainly have been open on a warm April evening. She could easily have overheard that Tuke was going up to have a look at Old Grim, slipped out herself and hidden behind the bushes where the path starts and followed him up. She finds him standing and surveying Old Grim prostrate on the ground.’
Toye blinked, and groped for what appeared to be the one substantiated fact which undermined this flow of conjecture. ‘But Rawlings has got an alibi for the whole time after she got home from work,’ he protested. ‘She was gardening out at the back of her place.’
‘Has she?’ Pollard queried. ‘And who provided it?’ he demanded bitterly. ‘Blind and bloody fool that I am, it dawned on me as I drove back from Woodcombe just now that the alibi rests solely on Eileen Fordyce’s word. In short, I’ve had one of the most disastrous lapses of my career.’
‘But why did she do it?’ Toye demanded, loyally rallying to Pollard’s defence. ‘Fordyce, I mean. They weren’t buddies. Remember Fordyce saying that they weren’t exactly friends. Made out that going in for a cuppa with Rawlings was quite a comedown.’
Pollard pushed his chair back from the table and sat with his arms folded.
‘I rather think,’ he sai
d, ‘that it’s been a case of mutual blackmail. We feel it’s likely, don’t we, that James Fordyce left confidential papers about Tuke’s family history lying on his desk when he dashed out after Kenway-Potter’s S.O.S. on the Wednesday evening? And also that Fordyce had, in fact, started looking things up for Tuke and got on to the marriage between Tuke’s father and Amaryllis K-P. If Eileen Fordyce is responsible for the anonymous letters, this was almost certainly the only chance she would have of getting at the information about the bigamy. The light would have been on in the study at half-past eight on an April evening, and Eileen Fordyce, completely absorbed, perfectly visible from the other side of the hedge. Suppose Rawlings, having spotted her, and curious about James Fordyce dashing off down the road, came round earlier than she admits, waits until she hears Eileen go upstairs to look out of the window, and then slips into the study herself. She files the information in her mind for possible future use, calls up to Eileen to ask if everything is all right and hears the news about Edward Tuke.’ He broke off and glanced at Toye who was listening intently and gave a nod.
‘Could’ve been like that,’ he conceded.
‘As everybody concluded at first that the football fans had pulled up the warning notices,’ Pollard went on, ‘it may have been some days before Deeds got round to taking a statement from Rawlings. By that time it would have struck her that an alibi for the evening of the twenty-third might be an advantage. She realised that she’d got Eileen Fordyce by the short hairs and gave her the option of providing the alibi, or having her husband told that she had taken the chance of reading confidential papers that he’d left on his desk that evening. He’d know only too well what the papers had been, of course. And in reverse, so to speak, Eileen Fordyce had got Rawlings by the short hairs in her turn.’
‘Funny,’ Toye reacted unexpectedly. ‘You said something about an unholy alliance before... Kenway-Potter and Fordyce to protect Mrs K-P when they’d found out about her first marriage... Do you think Mrs F. knew that her husband was in love with Mrs K-P?’
‘I think she probably senses it. Women do. If she does, it helps to explain her vindictiveness.’
‘If you’re right about Rawlings following Tuke up to the clearing, what do you suppose happened then?’
‘I think the impact of finding Tuke contemplating Old Grim flat on the ground sent her irrevocably off balance, leaving her with the quick-wittedness and cunning that often go with insanity. A little friendly chat about football hooligans, advice to Tuke to go up to see the view, and detailed instructions about the handy shortcut back to the car park at the Green Man... We’ve been over all this ground before, haven’t we? They part company, and Rawlings nips down and pulls up the notice. Getting back to her cottage is the risky bit, but she pulls it off. No one came forward to report having seen her.’
Toye, having listened with close attention, remained silent. Pollard suddenly grinned at him.
‘Come on,’ he said. ‘I’m waiting for it. Tell me again I’ve no proof whatever.’
Toye grinned back. Years of working together on a long succession of cases had established an unshakeable rapport between them.
‘Now and again I get an idea of the way the wind’s blowing,’ he said. ‘You’re working up to the third job, I take it: Bolling’s death in the fire? We’ve got something there that could lead to a solid bit of evidence with a bit of luck. What the fireman saw crouching down by Upper Bridge.’
Pollard saluted him ironically. ‘Two minds with but a single thought,’ he observed. ‘I don’t think we’ve given our full attention to all the gen Littlechester passed over to us on the fire. It’s in the file. Let’s have a go, and see how it ties in with what we got from Mrs Fordyce...’
The sequence of events after the discovery of the fire seemed to have been clearly established. The 999 call from Woodcombe had reached the fire stations at Wynford and Littlechester at 1.40 a.m. on Wednesday morning. The Wynford brigade reached the scene first.
In a brief statement to Inspector Deeds the officer in charge reported that as the fire engine turned off the main road into the village a woman had come dashing out of the first house on the right into the glare of the headlights, and the driver had slowed and swerved to avoid her. None of the crew had noticed a light in the house or in the one next to it, but their attention had of course been on the fierce glow of the fire at the far end of the village. A Wynford police car arriving about a minute later had contained a constable driver and a sergeant. The latter, well aware of the risk of break-ins when public attention was distracted by a fire, had scrutinised both the Fordyces’ bungalow and Mrs Rawlings’s cottage in passing, and stated categorically that there had been no lights in any of the windows. By the time the car reached the Green Man people were hurrying out of their doors and running down the village street, and neither of the men noticed a woman apparently on her own.
Pollard hunted in the file and extracted Mrs Fordyce’s statement on her actions at the time of the fire.
‘I didn’t want to be left alone,’ he read aloud, ‘so I began to grab some clothes, but he wouldn’t wait. Just told me to go in next door and see if Mrs Rawlings was all right... I saw that her light was on, so I didn’t stop. I ran on and the fire engine overtook me...’
They agreed that the discrepancies were suggestive but might be difficult to establish conclusively. Toye remarked that people would often tell lies to cover up that they’d made fools of themselves like bursting out of a gate without a thought of traffic.
Pollard agreed. ‘And she’d want to provide a reason for not going to see if Mrs Rawlings was up and doing,’ he said. ‘Let’s have a go at the Littlechester report.’
Here, in addition to the statement of the fireman who claimed that he had seen somebody crouching down behind the wall at Upper Bridge, or at least something “that looked like a human being”, there was agreement between two members of the crew that the two houses at the beginning of the village had been quite dark. Nothing doing in the street, either, until you got past the pub and people were milling about and getting in the way. The occupants of the Littlechester police car which had come along in the wake of the fire engine had noticed no one at the bridge, but confirmed the absence of lights in the windows of the two houses.
Pollard pushed away the sheets of typescript in front of him and sat with his chin cupped in his hands. ‘One loose end we must tidy up is this part-time job of Rawlings at the Littlechester City Library. How many days a week does she go in and pick up the Mobile Library van?’
‘Posting the anonymous letters?’ Toye asked.
‘Yeah. That’ll have to wait till tomorrow. I hate Sundays when I’m up to the neck in a case. Everything in a state of suspended animation. Let’s go over to Wynford and see if any of the firemen who came over to Woodcombe are available. We might pick up something. And we could have some grub over there, too.’
By an unexpected stroke of good luck the Wynford fire engine had just returned to base from a small heath fire, and the fire officer they had talked to amid the ruins of Bridge Cottage was available. They bore him off for a drink, in the course of which Pollard was struck by another possibility.
‘I suppose,’ he asked, ‘you didn’t notice anyone coming out of the cottage next door to the bungalow that the woman had run out of?’
The fire officer replied that he could say for sure that nobody had been coming out. He’d given a good look, being a bit jittery after that crazy jane had all but landed under the engine. A visit to the Wynford police station produced much the same result. The sergeant who had been in the police car was off duty but located by telephone. He was not only certain that no one was emerging from the cottage as they passed, but had looked back when they reached the Green Man. The ambulance that was following had just turned the corner and its headlights were lighting up the road into the village, but there was nobody coming along on foot.
Toye agreed over a supper of steak and chips that it did look as though Rawli
ngs hadn’t been in her house, at any rate until after the Littlechester brigade and its support had gone through.
Pollard reverted to the fire itself.
‘The forensic chaps seem quite definite that the gas explosion wasn’t part of the arsonist’s original programme,’ he said. ‘We’ll go on assuming for the present that it was the Rawlings woman’s scheme to get the ground floor well alight, and practically ensure that Bolling would be suffocated in his bed by fumes and smoke. She would have waited long enough to see things under way and then headed for home.’
‘Would she have left her bedroom light on?’ Toye asked.
‘No, I’m sure she wouldn’t. Somebody coming back late from a party or whatever might have noticed it. The great thing for a murderer is to be utterly unnoticeable if possible. But the explosion threw her timetable out. As she lurked behind the wall at Old Bridge I bet she was casting about for some way of showing that she had been in bed when Bridge Cottage blew up, and was hit by the idea of telling Mrs F to say her bedroom light had been on when she — Mrs F — had rushed out to see what was happening at the other end of the village. Knowing Mrs F as we do, she wouldn’t have missed out over looking up the aged in case Mrs K-P had already gone into action as Lady of the Manor.’
‘I can’t say I took to Mrs Fordyce,’ Toye observed temperately, ‘but would she have agreed to cover up a second successful killing?’
‘Rawlings had got her in a cleft stick if she posted the anonymous letters, knowing what was in ’em.’
They ate in silence for a couple of minutes.
‘Even if we find dozens of Chesil Bank pebbles on the ground round Old Grim we’ve no direct evidence against Rawlings yet,’ Pollard said. ‘But Mrs F might be tackled on the strength of the firemen’s and the police evidence about lights in the cottage. But we’ve got to co-ordinate with Littlechester. The fire and Bolling’s death are still officially their pigeon.’
A conference with the Chief Constable, Superintendent Martin and Inspector Deeds was held at nine o’clock on the following morning. After thorough discussion joint action was agreed upon. As a preliminary move a sergeant was sent to the City Library to enquire into the schedules of the Mobile Library vans in connection with alleged complaints of traffic obstruction. He returned with the information that Mrs Rawlings did a round on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Her Monday round was devoted entirely to villages on the north side of Littlechester.
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