Died and Gone to Devon

by TP Fielden

  ‘Is there something I can help you with, Miss Atherton?’

  ‘I rather think the boot may be on the other foot,’ said the old lady. ‘It concerns an old carrier bag. Brown with, as I recall, a red vertical stripe.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘It should be in your office somewhere. If you can locate it I think it may bear fruit, from a news point of view.’

  Miss Dimont’s enthusiasm collapsed. What the man in the street deems newsworthy rarely turns out to be so, and in any event, where would she find an old carrier bag?

  ‘I used to work with Margery Greenway at the library,’ went on the caller. ‘Twenty years we worked together.’

  ‘Oh yes, I must have seen you when I popped in,’ said Judy, ‘only I never knew your name.’

  ‘We had thousands through our door. We once spent a whole Thursday afternoon trying to work out how many library books we had issued over the years and…’

  ‘The carrier bag?’ reminded Judy gently.

  ‘I was coming to that. As you know, poor Margery died in a fall just before Christmas. I’ve never understood it, because she’d gone up the ladder and she was afraid of heights. I always did the ladder and she made the tea in return.’

  ‘I remember it very well.’

  ‘Two weeks before she died she had a visit from a man who said he worked for the Express. He came to ask about a man called Sirraway and they had a nice long chat. Margery was keen to know whether the professor’s book was coming out soon, and the man said he would find out. Sirraway had spent a long time in the library researching this and that and, to be frank, making a bit of a nuisance of himself – he complained about the Christmas tree! I ask you!

  ‘So I was glad when he finally finished whatever he was doing, though of course it was always nice to have the library used as a place of reference, not just a book-lending shop.’

  ‘Do go on,’ said Judy, battling to keep Miss Atherton on the straight and narrow. ‘This sounds very interesting.’ She wasn’t sure whether it was.

  ‘I was on holiday that week, packing up my cottage to move up here, so I never saw him, but Margery said they had a nice long chat and while they were talking she remembered that the man Sirraway had left a carrier bag behind. We always thought he would come back for it but he never did.’

  ‘What was in it?’

  ‘Well, a lot of paper, notes, research – that sort of thing. It was all about Sir Frederick Hungerford. Anyway, the man said he was interested and could he take it away and have a look at it. The bag was lost property as far as we were concerned, cluttering up the place, so Margery told him he could have it and if he ever found this man Sirraway, would he promise to give it back? And he said he would.’

  ‘Can you describe the man, Miss Atherton?’

  ‘Like I say, I never saw him. But Margery and I had a chat about him one day when we weren’t busy. She says although he sounded convincing at the time, afterwards she didn’t think he could be working for you – she’d never seen him around town. And he had an unusual manner.’

  ‘Well, people do sometimes pretend to be something they’re not. I must say the whole thing does sound peculiar.’

  ‘Oh, one thing. Margery said he had a slight accent – sort of American, she thought.’

  ‘Was his name Renishaw?’ said Miss Dimont, slowly.

  ‘I simply couldn’t say, I don’t think Margery ever told me. What she did say was he was very interested in some other notes Sirraway had made, about people who – well, I may as well be frank, Miss, er…’

  ‘Dimont, Judy Dimont.’

  ‘Some of the notes – Margery read them all – were about people who Hungerford had apparently stolen money from. Women mostly. I told her it was none of our business, I personally don’t deal in gossip. But she was frightfully keen and I think got quite a kick over talking about her discoveries with this man.’

  ‘Well,’ said Judy, who’d been furiously scribbling shorthand notes on the copy paper in front of her, ‘I’ll have to go and see if I can find this bag. Brown, you say, with a red stripe?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Miss Atherton.

  ‘Did he come back again? The so-called reporter?’

  ‘I don’t know. There was an odd moment a few days later, just before – you know, Margery’s fall – when a man came into the library but when he saw me, turned round and walked out again. A strange thing to do, I thought.’

  ‘What did he look like?’

  ‘I would gauge him to be in his late thirties – slim, energetic. Tell me, is that him? Does this man work for you?’

  ‘Not any more,’ came the grim reply.

  ‘Geraldine, this is Hugue. Are you sitting comfortably?’

  ‘I have a gin by my side, dear, if that’s what you’re asking.’

  ‘Excellent. I’m working in the office or I would have popped over to see you.’

  ‘That’s all right.’

  ‘Do you remember when we had that lovely evening in Wistman’s Hotel before Christmas, all that snow?’

  ‘Oh yes.’

  ‘And we talked about your friend Pansy. Then I went to see Bobbety after you wangled the invitation.’

  ‘Yes, dear.’

  ‘You told me a man came to see you about Pansy. Works here, at this office.’

  ‘I didn’t like him. He was peculiar.’

  ‘David Renishaw.’

  ‘He said his mother was Serenata Forbes – you remember, dear, she was a famous Gaiety Girl same as me, though I didn’t know her well. Anyway, he said he wanted to see me because he was thinking of writing a memoir of her and could I help.

  ‘Well, we started chatting and I told him what I recalled, like when Nata slipped over on a wet patch on the stage and gave the men in the stalls an eyeful – but after a bit he started asking about Pansy. He said that Pansy was a friend of his mother and he wanted to write her into the story.’

  ‘So what did you tell him?’

  ‘Not much. The way he kept on about her made me doubt he was interested in Nata at all – it was all Pansy, Pansy, Pansy. After a bit I made an excuse and said I couldn’t talk any more, could he come back some other time. He telephoned me a couple of times after that but I said I was busy.’

  ‘I think I’m beginning to see the light,’ said Judy, more to herself than to her friend. ‘David Renishaw told me that his mother was married to a hotel doorman in Paris and ran away to be in London. Serenata Forbes, as I recall, was the wife of the explorer Sir Gibson Forbes. They lived in some style in Chelsea as I recall. Not Paris.’

  ‘Such a handsome man, Hugue, not the doorman type at all.’

  ‘On the other hand, Pansy Westerham did live in Paris, did have a child, did run away. Think again, Geraldine, as a mother this time – think about Renishaw asking you those questions about Pansy.’

  ‘You mean…?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Judy, ‘I definitely do mean.’

  It was rather lovely, really: Terry was taking Judy out for Sunday lunch in his green Morgan two-seater. On the plus side it was a glorious day and it meant they could have the hood down, on the minus she was sure to have to endure a ten-minute lecture on the car’s patented sliding pillar front suspension, as far as one could judge one of the wonders of the Western world.

  This morning the king of the open road seemed awfully proud of his string-backed driving gloves which made it difficult for him to open the map; but they were obviously new so Judy made no comment and let him struggle.

  ‘Where are we off to, then?’

  Finally Terry managed to wrestle the map flat on the bonnet and waved a glove. ‘Thought we’d go across the moor up to Bridestowe, then follow the old railway line to the peat works,’ he said. ‘Then Southerly Down, the Lyd Valley, Great Nodden – there you are.’ The string-backed finger was so fat it completely obscured the route and Judy, as navigator, could see trouble ahead. She’d have to concentrate hard.

  The Morgan roared them away from the sea and up on
to Dartmoor, where vast empty expanses were already rejoicing in the coming summer with a riot of greens and purples and blues. Terry had managed to complete his description of the sliding pillar front suspension without hesitation, repetition or deviation, and quite soon the conversation turned to the inevitable.

  ‘Sirraway,’ said Terry, showily double-declutching. ‘We could just nip across to Hatherleigh – only take a quarter of an hour – and take a look around. There’s a nice pub there, too.’

  ‘We could,’ said Judy, happy to let Terry take the lead. ‘Only thing is, won’t the police have the place surrounded? If Sirraway went back there they’ll have arrested him by now and he’ll be back in Temple Regis. But they’ll leave a police guard, so I doubt we’d be able to get in.’

  ‘When he went missing before, he said he’d gone up to Ilfracombe – I wonder if there’s any point in driving around up there on the off-chance?’

  ‘Oho!’ said Judy. ‘So you didn’t want to take me to the pub for lunch, after all – you only came out here to track down the professor!’

  ‘Anything wrong with that?’

  ‘Police job, Terry.’

  Terry snorted. ‘With old Topham in charge, how long’s that going to take?’

  ‘Until Scotland Yard gets down here, I should think. Losing a hopeful parliamentary candidate is one thing, losing two is quite something else. Especially when the second one’s as famous as Freddy Hungerford.’

  ‘Topham won’t like that,’ said Terry, slowing and swerving expertly as a couple of Dartmoor ponies jumped friskily into their path.

  ‘There is one thing,’ said Judy, ‘since I can see I’m going to have to forget about lunch.’

  ‘Mm?’

  ‘I had a call yesterday from Miss Atherton – she used to work in the public library with the lady who died, Miss Greenway, d’you remember? That strange business of her falling off the ladder when she was afraid of heights. Well, Miss Atherton told me that Sirraway had spent the best part of a week in the library researching things just before Christmas.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Think about it.’

  Terry slowed the car. ‘Are you suggesting that Sirraway killed that Miss Greenway as well as Mirabel Clifford and Freddy Hungerford?’

  ‘Good Lord! Am I? It had never even occurred…’

  Terry stopped the car and pulled up the handbrake. ‘Don’t let me put words in your mouth, Judy,’ he said – was there a touch of acid there? – ‘but Sirraway now appears to be a multi-murderer – whadyoucallit?’

  ‘Serial killer.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘No, I’m not saying that. Or—’

  ‘Make up your mind, Judy!’

  ‘I don’t think it was like that, Terry, though you could be right. It’s complicated, but there are other suspects besides Sirraway. Did you bring the Thermos?’

  They wandered over to a massive rock and settled themselves comfortably on its layers, looking out at the sun-splashed landscape.

  ‘As of this moment, Hector Sirraway could be in the frame for two murders – OK, three, if we’re going to include Miss Greenway. That’s if she was murdered, we don’t know that, and maybe we’re getting things out of proportion – seeing murder where there isn’t any, Reds-under-the-beds kind of thing. So maybe better to discount her for the moment.’

  Terry was disappointed by this. He felt he’d just made a breakthrough and expected applause for it.

  Miss Dimont revisited the theories she and Auriol Hedley had wrestled with on Friday evening. ‘You see, it’s by no means certain Sirraway killed Sir Freddy.’

  ‘It was his tie that strangled the old boy, Judy.’

  ‘You said yourself he didn’t look particularly threatening when he was waving his placard around.’

  ‘Mood swings,’ said Terry. He couldn’t think of anything better.

  ‘He certainly could have killed Mirabel, though how he lured her up the Templeton Light I have no idea. We don’t know where he was at the time – did he have an alibi? We don’t know.’

  ‘Visiting that friend in Ilfracombe, I expect!’

  ‘I saw his letters to Mirabel but they never threatened violence. Exposure, yes – he felt she was covering up Hungerford’s misdeeds including the illegal appropriation of his property…’ her voice trailed off. ‘Wait a minute! Wait a minute! Where’s that map?’

  She raced over to the car and whisked it out of the map pocket – made of string, just like Terry’s gloves!

  ‘Over here, Terry, help me! Can you find Gorse Down? Somewhere near Chagford.’

  Terry laid the map on the bonnet and quickly found the place. ‘Want to go there? It’s about fifteen minutes away. But why?’

  ‘Tell you on the way.’

  As they drove, Miss Dimont explained to her chauffeur some of the mysteries of womankind. When a person says she does not deal in gossip, for example, it does not mean she is immune to its allure, just that she never repeats gossip. The starchy-sounding Miss Atherton made it clear to Judy only yesterday that she was a firm believer in keeping her mouth shut.

  ‘But her ears open,’ Judy added. ‘And so, though she claimed she never looked inside the carrier bag Professor Sirraway left behind in her library, she certainly listened hard when Miss Greenway told her what was inside. And she could remember it, word for word.

  Not only the business about Sir Freddy’s fortune-hunting with the ladies, but the real reason for Sirraway’s visit – to search for deeds or papers or references to a place called Rattlepark Mill. This, apparently, was one of the derelict properties Hungerford had surreptitiously stolen from its rightful owners.

  ‘He had a bee in his bonnet about that place, according to Miss Greenway,’ said Judy. ‘Turn left here!’

  It took them not fifteen minutes, but over an hour to find what they were looking for. Hidden away in a fold in the moor, approached by a worn-out track, they discovered the massive stone building set against a fast-flowing river. The mill wheel no longer turned, the roof had caved in, and the windows sagged and stared blindly across the landscape. None the less there were definite signs of life – from the back of the building came the smell of woodsmoke.

  They looked at each other.

  ‘Well,’ said Terry, ‘you’ve done it again, Judy. We’ve found the hidey hole of your double murderer.’

  He squared his shoulders.

  ‘You’d better let me handle this,’ he said grimly.

  Twenty-Five

  Terry rounded the corner, armed only with his courage and the Morgan’s cast-iron starting handle. There, sitting on the ground near the mill race, with the remnants of a brushwood fire before him, sat Professor Hector Sirraway.

  He looked up, quite unperturbed. After a pause he said:

  ‘That one way of the few there were

  Would hide her and would leave no mark:

  Black water, smooth above the weir

  Like starry velvet in the night…’

  ‘Er, Prof… er, Mr Sirraway,’ broke in Terry. Something told him to drop the starting handle before the fugitive spotted it. It fell with a quiet thud into the grass.

  ‘A poem about the death of a mill,’ said the professor dreamily, ‘and the death of its owners. The mill is no longer needed, and neither are they. There is only one route for them both.’ He turned back to look at the black water rushing close to his feet.

  ‘I wonder if you remember me?’ Terry said gently. ‘We had a cup of tea and a chat up at your place – oh, ages ago.’ He didn’t want to say, ‘When my colleague decided to have a go at you.’

  The professor eyed him mildly. ‘These thoughts run through your mind, don’t they? This place… all mine, but to what purpose? They stopped milling wool here even before my parents were born. For all their lives, and all of mine, it’s been rotting away here – forgotten, abandoned. It’s tragic really, don’t you think, when you consider the tons and tons and tons of wool that came through this place, clothing and warm
ing a whole nation?’

  This was not really Terry’s general line in chit-chat, and he was glad when Judy poked her nose round the corner. In gentlemanly fashion, Sirraway rose in the presence of a lady. ‘Would you like tea?’

  ‘Oh no, thank you, Professor, we had some recently. Are you all right?’

  ‘Clever of you to find me here.’

  ‘I imagine life must be difficult back at Hatherleigh – your place.’

  ‘This is where I come when I want to see things clearly,’ said Sirraway. ‘Let them make a fuss. I doubt they will find me here before…’

  Miss Dimont didn’t like the sound of this. ‘I will have that cup of tea,’ she said, wanting to stir him into action and push his thoughts in another direction. ‘And didn’t you bring some biscuits, Terry?’

  ‘In the Morgan. But are you sure…?’ He was concerned Sirraway might produce that knife.

  Miss Dimont smiled, ‘That’s OK, Terry,’ and went to sit next to the professor. ‘Nothing to worry about.’

  ‘Why should I worry?’

  ‘Well, yes. I think you know why we’re here.’

  ‘Local press,’ he laughed bitterly. ‘Want an exclusive. What d’you call it – a scoop?’

  ‘Only up to a point – we’re human beings, too. Just wanted to make sure you were all right. That must have been a terrible business with Sir Freddy.’

  ‘I still don’t understand it. All I’ve ever tried to do is prove he does not own Rattlepark Mill – it’s been in my family for a hundred years and it… is… mine! If he conceded that point I would go away and leave him alone.’

  ‘Too late now, Professor.’

  ‘Well, yes. A shameful business. Nobody has the right to take someone else’s life.’

  Miss Dimont weighed this response up, deciding what she would say next and the likely consequences of provoking her quarry. ‘Professor,’ she said quietly, ‘you know the police are after you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why are they after you?’

  ‘Well, it might have been better not to leave the scene of a fatality, but I…’

  ‘It’s more than that.’

  ‘What d’you mean?’