The Dancing Druids (Mrs. Bradley), page 23
The course was a circular one, with the starting-point on the northern circumference, so that at no time during the run were the competitors at more than about four miles from their base. The route avoided roads as far as possible, and permission had been obtained for the teams to include two private parks in the course, one south and one east of the starting-point. Here and there along the course were friends of the clubs who possessed cars and motor cycles, and acted as guides and checkers-in.
Between the two private estates lay a fairly considerable wood. A long hill led up to it, and on the home side there was a stretch of sand and heather known locally as Punch Dripham. It was uneven, and contained deep hollows not dangerous unless one wandered into them in the dark, but large enough, for the most part, to hide, say, a patrol of Boy Scouts or four or five men, for the lips of these places were overhung with soft soil in which great roots of heather writhed, while in the holes themselves there were wild, labyrinthine bushes of ancient gorse and occasional clumps of bracken.
The rendezvous for Gascoigne and O’Hara was to be in the depths of the wood before they reached Punch Dripham, and Gascoigne, arriving, according to arrangement, well ahead of the rest of the field, plunged in amongst the undergrowth until he was about twenty yards north of the path, and thankfully—for the pace he had set himself had been a hot one—he lay down on the bank of a small brook which flowed through the wood and waited for the signal from his cousin. The last of the checkers-in had greeted him some mile and a quarter further back along the course.
The Cambridge man, Gascoigne hoped, had been able to stick to O’Hara. He glanced at the wristwatch he was wearing, and by which he had been timing himself, and decided that he could take ten minutes’ rest at least before the others arrived.
It was very quiet in the wood. It was so far from any road along which vehicles could pass that its selection as the place in which Firman should be interviewed had seemed obvious. Gascoigne dipped his hand in the brook. It was clear, and rippled pleasantly over sand. Time passed. He looked at his watch and wondered idly why the checker-in had mentioned that people were shooting on the estate. He had not heard a sound of it himself. At the end of a quarter of an hour he felt irritable; at the end of twenty minutes he was anxious.
The trouble was that he did not know what to do. If he left the wood and so missed the others, that would be unfair to them and a breaking of the agreement which had been made. On the other hand, there was always the chance that one of them had met with a mishap. O’Hara had turned his ankle on the previous run; such accidents were always liable to happen. It might even be something more serious; one of the three spiked on a fence, through trying to vault it and slipping at the take-off, perhaps; or somebody helpless with a broken leg or badly-torn muscles.
Twenty-five minutes; and Gascoigne, in an agony of indecision—a state of mind to which, with his supreme, unegotistical self-confidence, he was entirely unaccustomed—began to walk through the woods to find out whether, by any possible chance, the others had arrived without his knowledge and were in another part of the wood.
The trees gave place, at one point, to a little clearing. He found Firman’s body half into a large clump of very tall, pink willow-herb. He would never have seen it but for the cloud of flies that rose with guilty haste at his approach. He would, even then, nave walked on, but he could not help seeing the area of smashed, long stems and the welter of crushed, pink blossoms. The next sight, that of the gaping mouth and one wide-open, horrified, dead, glazed eye, filled him with nightmare horror. There was a hole through Firman’s skull where his other eye had been, and a blackening of powder and a scorching of skin round the wound. Gascoigne had never felt so ill in his life. The fine afternoon surged blackly about him. He turned and staggered away, and then fell down in a near-faint merely from shock.
He had managed to struggle to his feet, and, pulling himself together, was wondering—his heart hammering and his mouth as dry as sand—what he had better do, when a youthful voice from a bush beside him observed on a confident note:
“You’re dead! It’s a plame we’re gaying.”
Gascoigne jumped a couple of yards. Then out of the bush crawled a boy in the uniform of a Wolf Cub. He was an engaging-looking child with scratched knees, freckles, a green cap, a grey jersey and a broad smile.
“I bagged him, Chinstrap,” he observed.
“Yes, Mr. Handley,” responded a second voice, as its owner followed the freckled Mr. Handley on to the path. “I don’t mind if you did, sir.”
“Well, it’s a fair cop, Governor Handley,” observed Gascoigne, collecting his wits. “How do, Colonel?”
“Happy to meet you, sir,” responded the Colonel. “Cow dew, did you say, sir? I’ll try anything.”
“Well, look here,” said Gascoigne earnestly, “as it happens, I’m rather in a spot.”
“Lather in a pot? I don’t think I should like it,” giggled the Colonel, entranced by his own wit. “Did you hear that, Mr. Handley? He said ‘rather in a spot,’ and I said ‘lather in a pot.’ Not bad!”
“Oh, dry up, Chinstrap, and don’t be funny,” said Mr. Handley, giving the Colonel a dig in the spine which made him wince. “Can’t you see he’s serious? Are you training for anything?” he asked, looking with great interest at Gascoigne’s running-vest with the Club badge on the left breast.
“No. Just a cross-country run,” said Gascoigne. “But I’m a—a sort of a special constable in my spare time—help the police a bit, you know—and I’m on the track of a criminal and I want to get in touch with them. Where’s the nearest police station? Do you know?”
“We wouldn’t be Wolf Cubs long if we didn’t,” said Mr. Handley, giving a realistic howl. “Look here, we shall probably go a good deal faster than you, even if you are a runner. We have to keep up a wolf’s pace, you know, which most grown-up people can’t manage. It takes a bit of doing, I can tell you! So perhaps we had better forge ahead and you can follow at your own pace. We’ll leave a spoor. Where do you want the police to meet you? Wouldn’t you like us to help you track the criminal? We’re very good at tracking, you know. I’m the best tracker, and Chinstrap comes-second, and then—’
“You silly ass!” shrieked the Colonel. “Of course you’re not the best! Why, only last week—”
“Oh, dry up! We’re on a job,” said Mr. Handley hastily.
“You’re jolly good chaps,” said Gascoigne, gratefully. He had been wondering how he could manage to get rid of the two children. It was quite impossible that they could play in the wood for long without discovering the body. “All right. You push along, then, but mind how you go. I shouldn’t rush. I wouldn’t have anyone of the Itma team hurt for any money.”
“Dirt and honey, sir?” said the irrepressible Chinstrap, smacking himself on the head, or, rather on the cap, with delight, and then ecstatically punching his friend. “I don’t think me sister would like it.”
The two little boys then neighed like horses, and began to canter away.
“What, Crafty Clara?” came over the air on the boyish, treble notes of Mr. Handley. “The woman who—” Gascoigne missed the rest of it, and settled down grimly to await the arrival of the others, not certain how long it would be before help came, and speculating upon the length of time the body had been in the wood before he had arrived. He could guess who had killed Firman, but not where the murderer had gone. It was evident, though, that the checker-in had heard the shot, and this would help to fix the time of the death.
At the end of ten minutes he heard the sound he had been awaiting, the call of the cuckoo repeated four times. He came out on to the path by which he had reached the wood, and saw O’Hara alone.
“We’re too late,” he said, as soon as his cousin came near. “Somebody’s shot poor Firman through the head. I’ve found the body.”
“We saw him kidnapped,” said O’Hara. “That fellow—Battle, or whoever he is—swooped on him with a car just as we’d got him cut out from the rest of the field. He forced him to get in. We’ve been trying to find out where the car went. That’s why I’m late. Is he really—I suppose you do know that he is dead?”
“He’s dead all right. He was killed before I got here. I found the body. It’s back there.” Gascoigne jerked his head. “Could you swear to Battle?”
“Impossible to swear to him. For one thing, he’d got a tin hat on—you know how that alters a chap’s appearance—and he had a handkerchief tied over his mouth and chin. There was nothing to see but his eyes, and I couldn’t have sworn to those, I mean, not at a trial or even to the police.”
“It wasn’t Cassius, I suppose?”
“It might have been. I couldn’t say. Nobody could accept my identification, I’m afraid.”
“What happened, exactly?”
“Well, it isn’t very easy to describe. He just drove straight up to Firman. I thought he was going to drive into him at first. So did Firman. He jumped a gorse bush and the fellow drove straight on after him. Then he took out a gun, after he had pulled up the car, called on Firman to stop, went up to him, stuck the gun in his ribs, and took him back to the car. Firman got into the car, and away they went.”
“Where were you when all this happened, then?”
“About two hundred yards behind; but we were on the other side of a hedge, and I don’t think the fellow saw us. He was in the deuce of a hurry. Neither of us did a thing. I still don’t see what there was to do. The two were in the car, and the car was off, before we could grasp what had happened.”
“Did Firman seem to know the chap?”
“Oh, yes, there’s not much doubt he did.”
“Well, this fellow’s killed him—or somebody has.”
“Yes, well, I’ve sent someone to fetch the police. I’d better trot back and direct them here. I should think he’s got them by now. By the way, I found a telephone, and rang up Mrs. Bradley. I thought she ought to know about the kidnapping.”
“We shall have to ring her again.” said Gascoigne gloomily. “We are unlucky. It looks as though Firman knew something really important.”
“Or else that, whatever he knew, they had reason to think he’d spill it.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
“…so she said he was like a green stick that had been laid to dry over a baker’s oven.”
THE BROTHERS GRIMM (King Grisly-Beard)
Laura, meanwhile, had received a reply to her message and gift. She had given the address of the hotel at Welsea to David Battle in case there should be any queries about the portrait of her that he was painting, and here she was rung up on the telephone at about the time that the police, converging on two sides—for the Wolf Cubs had made haste to call the local police constable to the wood—had seen the body of Firman and had taken it, Gascoigne and O’Hara into their charge.
“Is that you, Miss Menzies?” came over the line. “This is Battle. I say, never mind anything else, but could you sit to me again?”
“What’s gone wrong?” enquired Laura.
“Nothing. Your portrait’s finished. I want to paint you again.”
“Eh? Why?”
“I want to. Will you come? I want—I’m sure you won’t disappoint me—I want, to paint you this time. Not just your face and hands and clothes.”
“What, in the so-and-so?” said Laura thoughtfully. “My young man would have a fit.” She took the instrument from her ear and stood entranced awhile at this prospect. “What do you say?” she enquired, becoming aware that the telephone was still bleating.
“I said you must let me. I’m going to call it Atalanta or else Hippolyta. I don’t know yet. You’ve got to come.”
“Only correctly chaperoned, then,” said Laura. “And by somebody with a gun,” she added darkly to herself, remembering that he was the son of Toro’s murderer.
“What? Chaperoned? Oh, any darn thing you like. When can you come?”
“I’ll ring up and let you know,” said Laura, with a degree of caution to which ordinarily she was a stranger.
“And, I say! You wouldn’t marry me, I suppose? I feel I could do great things with you beside me, urging me on, and—”
“Waiting until you’ve served your seven years’ stretch!” said Laura derisively. “You forget what’s coming to you, my lad, for defrauding the art-loving public! Well, I’ll let you know about the rudery. I’m not promising, mind! I don’t want the sack from Mrs. B.”
She hung up and went to find her employer. Mrs. Bradley, however, was no longer in the hotel. She had gone to confer with the Chief Constable on matters of public importance, and, to his annoyance, she arrived in time to prevent his enjoyment of his Saturday afternoon golf.
“Good heavens, Adela!” he protested. “Can’t you choose some more reasonable time?”
“I thought you might like to know that the dead man is almost certainly Allwright, and that you could learn a good deal about him by circulating a description of him to the banks in Cuchester. He’d become a blackmailer, and has probably paid in a good deal of money somewhere—always in cash, I should imagine. You could also gain something from an examination into the private affairs of Mr. Cassius Concaverty.”
“We’ve got that in hand. From the account in the name of Concaverty, about fifteen thousand pounds have been withdrawn since the beginning of December, 1946.”
“Ah! That fits nicely, doesn’t it?”
“Fits with what?”
“With the medical theory that the arm in the iron coffin was injured about four years ago. Allwright would have pleaded with and begged from his employers for a bit, and then, when the war was over, he would have begun to blackmail them.”
“Yes, that all sounds feasible, doesn’t it?” Sir Crimmond agreed. “But, look here, Adela, it will keep until Monday, dash it! Fielding is in charge of the case, and he’s a thoroughly competent fellow. Dash it, I want to play golf!”
“Well, you can’t, unless I come with you. And if I do, I shall walk round with you and tell you all about the older Battle, and you know how you dislike to carry on conversations on the greens.”
“You’re a blasted nuisance!” said the Chief Constable, glumly. “Ah right. Come into the house. I shall have to telephone and put Beauchamp off.”
“You see,” said Mrs. Bradley, when this was settled, “the trouble is that even if you do catch Battle, and charge him with murder—”
“But we can’t! We haven’t a ha’porth of proof! Dash it, the fellow’s laughing at us!”
“I know. That is why, as I am trying to tell you, you must find some from somewhere. Somebody murdered Allwright, and you won’t get any more out of Cassius. When it comes to the point, and you get the American side of it, he may talk about pictures, but he certainly won’t talk about murder.”
“I know all that.”
“Of course you do. I have a fatal habit of recapitulation due to having to lecture to people who won’t read books but have been brought up on a diet of films and the wireless. Well, all that I was going to suggest is this: at Cottam’s there is an old man, very simple, employed on odd jobs in the garden. Why don’t you get him to describe Allwright and Battle? Then, when you arrest Battle, the old man could be brought along to identify him.”
“That won’t help. It isn’t getting Battle identified that’s going to be the trouble. It’s getting young O’Hara to swear to him. O’Hara is our only reliable witness to what happened at the farm, and—’
“I know. But what you don’t know is that—”
“Nobody is going to believe—no juryman at any rate—that O’Hara can identify with certainty a man he saw only at night by the light of an electric torch.”
“He heard his voice, remember. Oh, I agree about the jury, but I was just going to tell you—”
Before the Chief Constable could hear the rest of the sentence, the telephone rang.
“It’s Inspector Fielding, dear,” said his wife, who had taken the call. “Will you take it in here?”
“No, no. I’ll come into the lounge. You stay here and look after Adela. I daresay she’d like a cup of tea. I expect Beauchamp to ring up about a foursome to-morrow. He said, when I put him off to-day, that he’d try to fix something for to-morrow.”
“Well, how are the patients?” enquired the hostess, when she and Mrs. Bradley were left alone. “I hear you’ve been spending your summer holiday getting my poor old Crimmie’s goat?”
Sir Crimmond’s wife was a bright-eyed woman of thirty; his second wife, in fact, and the apple of his choleric eye. Mrs. Bradley denied indignantly, first, that she had had a summer holiday, since coming to see one’s grandchild christened could scarcely be called that; she added, that, until the birth of the baby, she had been lecturing in Denmark; secondly, she denied that she would ever be wicked enough to get Sir Crimmond’s goat under any circumstances whatsoever unless he turned into a wife-beater.
At this point Sir Crimmond reappeared. He was red in the face and very angry.
“Damn it, Adela! Do you know what’s happened now?” he demanded. “Those confounded nit-wits have allowed another murder—another murder!—to be committed within my boundaries! A man called Firman has been found shot through the right eye—death instantaneous—in a wood about three miles from Beauchamp’s own place, the Towers, at Little Beddlehampton! The county’s becoming a shambles! Really it is! I’ve got to go and see to it, of course. You’d better come with me. You can give me your views as we go.”
“I haven’t any views until we have seen the body, and until I am sure those two boys are safe,” said Mrs. Bradley. “Mr. O’Hara and his cousin, Mr. Gascoigne, were out with this man Firman in an endeavour to extract information with regard to the other murder.”
