Alibi For A Corpse, page 4
part #3 of Pollard & Toye Investigations Series
‘Let’s park here,’ said Pollard, pointing to a level stretch of rough grass between the road and the low banked-up hedge. ‘We’ll be less obvious on our feet, and I want to spy out the land a bit first.’
As Alan Pulman had said, the cars could not be seen from the road. The convex slope of the ground cut them off, together with the houses. On the left, beyond the stream, the moor was a vast sombre expanse under the sunless sky, the rocks crowning the tors black and menacing. Toye said that as far as he was concerned anybody could have it.
‘Wait till the day brightens up a bit,’ Pollard told him, turning and walking across the road to look in the opposite direction. There were signs of an old track continuing the line of the Twiggadon lane, which he pointed out to Toye.
‘Wonder if that’s the spook woman’s Road of Death?’ he said. ‘It’s one of the ancient trackways over the moor, and probably has some legend tied up with it. We’ll try it as an opening gambit with her. Let’s go along to the dump now. Crake said it was the first gate on the left.’
The field sloped down towards the houses as well as in the direction of the stream, and the huddle of derelict cars was on the former slope, near the hedge bordering the lane. There were not more than a dozen, together with a scatter of miscellaneous junk. Toye, a vintage car enthusiast, bore down on them eagerly.
‘Coupla bull-nosed Morrises,’ he announced. ‘Here’s the body and wheel of a Model T Ford. Engine and chassis went for scrap, I expect. Why, here’s a Bean Tower radiator and —’
‘Come off it,’ said Pollard, amused. ‘We aren’t at Lord Montagu’s place at Beaulieu. Look, this must be where the car was. The Wintlebury chaps must have borrowed a tractor to drag it clear. An old Austin Sixteen… Can you see any other which would have done as well from the murderer’s point of view?’
‘None of this lot has outsize boots,’ replied Toye, running a critical eye over the battered assembly. ‘That Vauxhall Twenty’s would have been about the same size, but the car’s much harder to get at behind all that stuff. I reckon the Austin was the obvious choice.’
Pollard nodded, and began to consider to what extent the dump was an obvious feature of the landscape. Anyone on the far side of the stream could not fail to see it, and could easily come over and investigate. Hikers crossing the bridge and following the track out into the moor could see it, too, although the hedge screened it from the lane. Of the four Twiggadon houses, the farm and Moor View were out of sight, but the cottage had an unobstructed view up the valley, and Watchers Way was only a short distance down the lane. Pollard went to the spot formerly occupied by the Austin Sixteen, and looked up at the dormer window in the roof of the bungalow. As he did so, he thought he detected a swift movement of withdrawal.
‘Come away from the hedge,’ he said to Toye. ‘You never know whose ears are flapping on the other side.’
Standing in the middle of the field they discussed the technical problems involved in getting the body into the boot.
‘I’m quite certain it was done by night,’ Pollard insisted. ‘I can’t believe anyone would risk it in daylight, in what’s almost a public place. The simplest thing would be to bring a car to the gate, but could this have been done without attracting attention at Watchers Way or even at Moor View, which isn’t much further on?’
‘If the car’d come from the top it could coast down in neutral, but you’d either have to leave the engine running, or start up again, and I don’t think anyone in Watchers Way could help hearing. Quite small sounds wake you if they’re out of the ordinary, as a car would be in this lane in the middle of the night. Coming up from the farm you’d have to pass both houses, and the engine’d make more noise anyway.’
‘Let’s suppose Bickley did the job. This is his field. Couldn’t he have driven up here with the body hidden under some sacks, without anyone paying any attention? He could have taken a look round, and then heaved it into a ditch if there is one, and come up on foot during the night to finish the job.’
They made a careful search, but found no ditch or other possible hiding-place. Out in the lane once more they paused to look back towards the road.
‘An outsider could have done it, you know,’ said Pollard. ‘I can visualize some sort of invalid’s chair with wheels, which would fold and go in the back of a car. It’s a thousand to one against anything coming along this road in the middle of the night, just when you were yanking the corpse out of your own boot and tying it into the chair. You’d have oiled the wheels, and arrive down at this gate without making a sound.’
Toye considered.
‘You’d have to have a torch. Else you’d risk tripping over some of the junk in there, and making the whale of a clatter. Still, a light’d be much less of a risk than a car. All the same, sir, I’d put my money on its being a local job.’
‘You’re probably right,’ Pollard agreed, ‘but I maintain it could have been a physical possibility for someone from outside, provided he’d reconnoitred the cars first, of course. Come on, let’s go and meet the Wainwright family.’
A beach bag bulging with towels and swim suits, and a large basket of food lay on the grass inside the gate of Moor View and children’s excited voices were coming from the house. The next moment two small fair-haired figures in shorts appeared in the doorway and came dashing out, only to stop short in surprise.
‘Hallo!’ said Pollard. ‘You must be the Wainwright twins. Is your father anywhere about?’
For a second they stared at the detectives, interested but a little wary, like a pair of young animals.
‘We’ll go and tell him,’ said the boy. ‘C’mon, Clare.’
They vanished into the house. Perhaps a boy like that, thought Pollard with sudden excitement, with a fantastic potential for life and action… Or a girl… She was utterly different, although the physical resemblance was so strong. A bit withdrawn already. Absorbing to watch a woman, develop from scratch…
He hastily slammed down on his private life as Derek Wainwright arrived.
‘Good morning, sir,’ he said, producing his official card. ‘Are you just off for the day? Or could you spare me a few minutes first?’
‘By all means, Superintendent. We can’t start till my wife comes back from Wilkaton with the car. Won’t you come in?’
He led the way into the drawing-room, indicated chairs, and offered cigarettes.
‘I don’t wonder you feel staggered,’ he said, smiling. ‘Incredible, isn’t it? I’ve just inherited the house and its entire contents from an elderly cousin, who’d lived in it for nearly seventy years.’
Responding easily in the same vein Pollard studied Derek Wainwright with interest, noting the intelligent brow, strong chin and sensitive eyes and mouth. Which strain comes uppermost in his character, he wondered? As the conversation progressed his trained observation registered a slight wariness. Is it chronic, he speculated, or specific in relation to me or the present situation? He decided to put out a feeler.
‘I expect you know this part of the world well, as you’ve had a relative living here for so many years?’ he remarked casually.
‘You’ll hardly believe it,’ Derek Wainwright replied, ‘but last Monday was the first time I set foot in this house. My late cousin — she was a very distant one, incidentally — carried on a long-standing family feud to the bitter end. Her solicitor tells me that she had a frightful tussle with herself about leaving me the place and her money, but I’m the only surviving Wainwright, and I suppose the Victorian sense of property triumphed. Have you ever seen a more shatteringly hideous house? We’ve already put it up for sale.’
All true, and my question skilfully side-tracked, thought Pollard with mounting interest.
‘It does rather hit you between the eyes,’ he agreed, ‘and your visit has got off to a most unpleasant start, I’m afraid. Are the children badly upset?’
‘Clare certainly was. After the first shock scientific curiosity got the upper hand with Philip. The odd thing is that they don’t seem in the least bothered at the thought of a murder having happened just up the lane. They’re quite excited at the thought of Scotland Yard detectives turning up. If you could possibly just speak to them they’d be thrilled to bits.’
‘We certainly will,’ Pollard promised. ‘Of course, there’s no actual proof that a murder has been committed, you know. Not up to the present. All we can say definitely is that the skeleton belonged to a young man of about twenty, but we haven’t established his identity yet. There are absolutely no distinguishing marks, like dental work or old fractures.’
‘How can you even begin to track him down, if that’s the case? Surely it must have happened years ago for the poor chap to have been reduced to bare bones?’
‘Not all that long ago,’ Pollard replied. ‘We know pretty well when it happened. Death occurred sometime between May and November of last year. If we take the half-way mark, it could have been round about this time last year. So we’ve got something to work on. We’re starting an intensive enquiry about any strangers seen around here then.’
With a small thrill of excitement he saw Derek Wainwright’s hand stop dead in the act of returning his cigarette to his mouth. There was a pause, slightly too long to be normal, before he spoke.
‘That’s going to be a bit of a problem for you,’ he said, without looking at Pollard. ‘You’d be surprised at the number of hikers who come along here.’
‘I was rather afraid of that,’ Pollard answered. ‘However, it’s quite astonishing what you can unearth if you stick at it long enough. By the way, I understand that your late cousin’s housekeeper is still here. We might begin our enquiries by having a chat with her, if she’s available.’
As he spoke a car drew up at the gate with a couple of toots, and the children could be heard running through the hall.
‘Oh, there’s my wife!’ There was recognizable relief in Derek Wainwright’s voice. ‘You’d like to meet her, I expect, although she can’t help you any more than I can.’ He turned to the door as it opened, and Rachel came into the room. ‘This is Superintendent Pollard and Sergeant Toye of Scotland Yard, darling. I’ve just been telling them that we’re new to the place, and can’t tell them anything, beyond what happened on Tuesday afternoon.’
Rachel impressed Pollard favourably. No wariness here, he thought, meeting her frank interested gaze as they talked. He formed the opinion that if her husband were involved in something illicit, she almost certainly knew nothing about it.
Nora Pearce was nervous at first but soon responded to Pollard’s conversational technique, pouring out a stream of information about her post with Bertha Wainwright.
‘Yes,’ she told him, with a quick smile and a flash of teeth, ‘I’ve been here nearly twenty years. Such a long time, but it doesn’t feel like it! I came to dear Miss Wainwright just after the war, so very thankful to leave my wartime work. I cooked for a Land Girls’ hostel, you know, and I’m afraid I did find it rather uncongenial. Not the hard work, though hard it certainly was. I was glad to play my little part under dear Mr Churchill’s leadership — or should I say Sir Winston’s? But some of the Land Girls were, well, a little rough, although on the whole a splendid set of young women, you know. But of course this dreadful thing must have happened before I came to Miss Wainwright, surely? A very long time ago, if — er — what was found was as the police say.’
‘On the contrary,’ Pollard said, deciding to play the same card again, ‘it happened quite recently. Probably about this time last year, or a bit earlier or later. So you may be able to help me, Miss Pearce. I want you to think back to the middle part of last year. Try to remember if you ever saw anyone acting at all suspiciously around here, especially during the night.’
He watched a whole sequence of expressions pass over her face. Initial incredulity was quickly followed by illumination, dismay, and finally sheer terror. She went very white, and nervously moistened her lips with the tip of her tongue.
‘Oh, no,’ she said hoarsely, after an appreciable pause. ‘Nothing at all. Of course, there are a lot of visitors about during the summer. In the daytime, that is.’
‘Take your time, Miss Pearce,’ Pollard said reassuringly. ‘There may have been some small incident which you didn’t give a second thought to at the time. Do you keep a diary, by any chance?’
She reacted so violently that he was quite startled.
‘I couldn’t show you my diary,’ she almost sobbed, colour flooding into her face again. ‘It’s private. You — you haven’t any right.’
‘Miss Pearce, I shouldn’t think of asking to see it. I should be grossly exceeding my duty. It simply occurred to me that if you did keep one, looking through it might bring something which you noticed last summer to your mind. Will you do this for us, just on chance?’
She nodded dumbly.
‘Thank you. We shall be very grateful. Let us know if you come on anything that might possibly have a bearing on this case: we shall be around for the next day or two. And now we’ll be off. Don’t bother to see us out.’
In the lane Toye turned a puzzled face to Pollard.
‘She’d have cracked in another minute, sir. Why did you lay off her? It’s plain enough she knows something.’
‘She wouldn’t have cracked. Not today, anyway. She’d have taken refuge in hysterics. Believe me, middle-aged women with principles are about the toughest nuts of the lot. Besides, who is it that she knows something about? Surely the maidenly blushes over the diary can’t be anything to do with Derek Wainwright? The plot thickens.’
Toye whistled.
‘December love?’ he suggested.
‘Well, say October. She can cook, presumably, and sew, too, I expect. Not all that ineligible from the point of view of an elderly male. She’s got a nice little nest-egg tucked away, I bet.’
‘Could she be sweet on Bickley or Stobart, sir? Not much choice round here, is there?’
‘It could be someone a bit further afield. I think we’ll call on Constable Haycraft presently, when we nip over to Wilkaton for some bread and cheese and beer. What did you make of Derek Wainwright?’
‘It put the wind up him when you mentioned this time last year, didn’t it? He’s been here before, and unless there was something fishy about the visit, why lie about it?’
‘The odd part is,’ Pollard said thoughtfully, ‘that he lied about it from the start, in his statement to Crake. Unless he committed the murder, which frankly doesn’t seem very probable from what we know at the moment, he wouldn’t have known that last summer was a suspicious time for anyone to have hung around Twiggadon. I watched him very closely this morning, and I think he genuinely believed that the skeleton had been in the boot for years. Most people are very vague about the rate of post-mortem decomposition, and think it’s much slower than it actually is. Anyway, we can’t do anything more about him until the report from the Wrilburn police comes in.’
They stopped at the gate of the farm, and Pollard ran an appreciative eye over the house and the great barn.
‘Bickley will be out on the farm at this hour,’ he said. ‘You go in and ask his wife when it’s convenient for us to see him. Ingratiate yourself, and she may offer you a glass of cider. It’s important not to step off on the wrong foot with Bickley; we shan’t get a word out of him if we do. I’ll go on and have a bash at Henry Stobart — if he’s there.’
As he walked on it struck him that the cottage had the look of a frontier post in mountainous country. The track narrowed between the two tors, the one on the right rising sheer, a fantastic pile of huge granite blocks from which shattered turrets projected skywards. A bit overpowering as a near neighbour, Pollard thought.
The cottage was uncompromisingly shut up, with a curtain drawn across the lower window. He knocked and listened, his ear against the door. No sound came from within. He knocked and listened again. Then, satisfied that the place was empty, he took an official card from his wallet. Under his name he wrote ‘I wish to interview you, and shall call again later today. Kindly remain at home when you return.’ He added the date and time, and as there was no letter box pushed the card under the door.
Looking about him he decided that although the cottage was small and would certainly lack mod. cons, it had an air of snugness. The small front garden was neat. An outsize sleek cat slept in a corner of a well-tilled vegetable patch at the side. A wooden shed was padlocked, but through the window he could see a tidy array of tools, logs and a big drum of paraffin. Obviously the chap’s got something to live on, he thought as he retraced his steps. If there’s a bank account it ought to be possible to find out where he came from.
Rounding the corner he came face to face with Toye, and made a gesture of empty-handedness.
‘Out,’ he said, ‘and the place bolted and barred, but somehow I don’t think he’s done a bunk. I’ve left a note to say we’ll be back. How did you get on?’
‘Lumme,’ said Toye with feeling, ‘she rattles away like a machine-gun. You can hardly take in what she’s saying. One of those women who streak around at such a rate that they raise a draught. Bickley’s up on the moor, but he’ll be bringing his hay in from the fields behind the farm this afternoon, so I said we’d look in then. You were right about the cider, sir. Smashing it was: the real stuff out of a cask.’
‘I suppose you know that sort’s highly intoxicating,’ Pollard told him. ‘I think I’d better drive into Wilkaton. It might look bad if you rammed the war memorial. The Wainwrights’ car gone. What’s the betting that Nora Pearce is hard at it burning her diary to save it from our sacrilegious hands?’
As they approached Watchers Way a curious little scene took place. A young girl came furtively out of the gate, and gave a start on catching sight of them. She was pale and adenoidal, with lank hair hanging over her shoulders, and wore a navy blue anorak, almost as long as her mini skirt. She hurried off up the hill clutching a small parcel wrapped in newspaper, and was joined by another girl who darted out from the cover of a gateway. As they made for the main road they conferred anxiously with heads close together, giving a glance over their shoulders from time to time.
