Uncoffind Clay, page 5
part #57 of Mrs Bradley Series
‘I thought they were illegal,’ I said, suddenly remembering the boy on the bridge with his ‘spring-guns and man-traps’.
‘Of course they are! This one was probably stolen from the folk museum ten days ago. Before that, a Victorian doll went and, with the man-trap, some sets of handmade cottage-industry buttons, a swingle and a couple of early nineteenth-century handmade smocks.’
‘What’s a swingle?’
‘What it sounds like. You swing it to beat flax so as to get the woody bits out. It’s a kind of flail. Come to think of it, you could give somebody a pretty nasty knock with one, if you decided to use it as a weapon. It’s made of wood, but it stands to reason that the loose part you swing must be heavy, or it wouldn’t do the job it’s made for.’
‘Are they still in use?’
‘I have no idea. Museum pieces only, nowadays, I should imagine. I don’t even know whether they grow flax in these parts.’
‘These smocks which were stolen would have been made of linen.’ said Mary, ‘the same as sheets always used to be. You can’t do proper smocking on cotton.’
‘Smock-frock is the full title,’ I said. ‘The garment was a sort of overall and the smocking was to gather the top part so that it fitted the wearer round the chest while allowing plenty of movement from the chest downwards.’
‘ “He knows it all!” ’ quoted Mary admiringly. ‘What do the police want us to do about our burglary?’
‘Keep the doors locked and the windows shut and report any suspicious circumstances, that’s all, but I don’t suppose we’ll have any more trouble. They seem to have got what they came for.’
‘And Wally Halstock?’
‘They’ve still got him, as I said. One thing: the fellow Mike found in the kitchen must be something like Wally to look at — about the same age, anyway, if that’s anything to go on.’
‘My description would probably fit a score of men aged between twenty and twenty-five. I only got one really good look at the fellow before he took off,’ I said.
‘But you would recognise him if you saw him again?’
‘Only if he was wearing the same clothes, I’m afraid, and if he’d taken off the Balaclava helmet I doubt whether I could recognise him at all. I can understand about the things taken from here,’ I went on. ‘They were valuable; but what about the museum specimens? What use would they be to a gang of thieves and receivers?’
‘Collectors’ items, I suppose. I daresay there’s a market for such things in America. Anyway, it seems clear why the man-trap was taken,’ said Innes. ‘Do you think, if you heard it again, you would recognise that man’s voice, Mike?’
‘I can’t be sure. He only said he wanted to look at the sink and the gas cooker. As the same man seldom does both, I suspected he was up to no good. Besides, what he was carrying didn’t look like a tool-bag.’
‘If Wally was going to do some work on the other side of the valley, the woods would have been on the sheikh’s estate,’ said Innes. ‘I wonder who got caught?’
‘Perhaps the sheikh doesn’t know that man-traps are illegal,’ said Mary. ‘I suppose he’s been suffering from poachers. There are deer on that estate.’
‘If he suffered from anything of that sort, it would be cattle rustlers,’ said Innes. ‘A lot of that has been going on.’
‘Not in these parts, though.’
‘Well, Hampshire is only over the border, and what are fifty miles or so nowadays in a car? Did you have a good walk, Mike?’
‘Yes,’ I said, ‘and I hit upon a little bit of a mystery. Do you know Fell Hall?’
‘Well, we know where it is, but we’ve not been there.’
‘A woman who lives at the lodge — well, at one of the lodges — told me it was all right to go along and have a look at the ruins. I didn’t particularly want to bother at first, but when I came to another lodge, an unoccupied one, I changed my mind.’
‘What was the mystery?’ asked Mary.
‘A padlocked room on the second floor.’
‘I expect it’s where the family keep the skeletons,’ said Innes.
‘How about a burglar’s hidey-hole for the loot until they can get it to a fence?’ I suggested. I said it only as a joke, but Mary took it seriously.
‘They’d need somewhere, wouldn’t they?’ she said. ‘I think the police ought to know about your locked room, Mike. Wouldn’t it be nice if we could get our things back straight away, and other people get theirs?’
We told her it was a crazy idea, but nothing would satisfy her except that Innes and I should go to the police station and make a report. She was so insistent that Innes, who, of course, adores her — so do I, for the matter of that! — said, ‘Come on, Mike. We shan’t get any peace until the boss has her own way.’ So he got the car out and we drove to the police station and asked to see Superintendent Hallicks. I felt rather foolish, and I doubt whether the police would have been impressed by my story, let alone have decided to act on it, had not Innes been on the local Bench and Chairman of it when Lord Maumbury was not available. As it was, Hallicks listened with respect to what I had to say and to my delight (for men belong to the sex which never really grows up) the police not only got out a car, but invited us to follow them to Fell Hall if we wanted to see what was in the locked room.
‘We don’t need a warrant to search a derelict house,’ said Hallicks.
My walk had seemed a long one, but this time we went by the way on which I had returned and the two cars made nothing of the journey. I told my brother about the two men I had seen in the estate car, and added that one of them, I thought, could have been our burglar, but I knew this was wishful thinking and rather unlikely.
However, it was not unlikely at all. The police soon sorted out the padlock I had longed to have a go at, and there before us was Aladdin’s cave, or an ‘Open, Sesame’.
‘Of course we shall have to hold all this stuff for identification,’ said the police superintendent, ‘so if you recognise your own bits and pieces, Mr Lockerbie, this is a cache of stolen property all right, and we’re taking formal possession of it pending enquiries.’
‘You might stretch a point and let me have my wife’s Meissen mirror,’ said Innes. ‘You know what women are. They are lost without their reflection in a looking-glass and she values that particular mirror highly.’
‘It is a valuable piece, I’m sure, sir.’
‘Sentimentally regarded, as well as intrinsically valuable, Superintendent. Do let me have it. After all, you would not have been told about this room unless she had insisted. As mere males, my brother and I would have taken the view that, if people choose to lock up a room in their house, it’s their own business.’
‘Ownership of the house is in dispute, Mr Lockerbie. That’s why your good lady did right in being suspicious of a locked room, and in a ruin at that. Anyway, if you were to slip the mirror to your brother while my back is turned and he were to decide to nip downstairs and put it in your car, I don’t know that anybody need be the wiser.’
Mary was delighted to get her mirror back. It was a delightful piece, a long, rather narrow oval with a pair of naked infants at the top. Down the sides were roses and carnations, each porcelain creation slightly different from any other, and every petal as exquisitely modelled as were the tiny hands and fingers of the putti. I think there were tears in Mary’s eyes as she hung it in its place again. She said, ‘Oh, Mike, thank you,’ so, despite Innes’s presence, I kissed her. He did not mind. He smacked me between the shoulder-blades when I had released her, and said, ‘Great stuff, old man, and all done through ornery curiosity, eh, you snooper?’
‘I don’t know about curiosity,’ I said, ‘but I hope the police will go easy on that woman at the first lodge. She can’t have any guilty knowledge, or she would never have suggested that I should go up and take a look at the house. She said she never went there herself.’
‘Perhaps one of the men in the estate car is her husband. If so, he probably knew something, even if she didn’t,’ said Innes. ‘I find it hard to believe that the caretakers had no knowledge of that locked room. Surely it was their responsibility to keep an eye on the house to make sure it wasn’t vandalised? Not that we get much of that sort of thing around here, although somebody did set fire to the village school once, so Martha Lorne told us, but that was years ago.’
‘Fell Hall is so badly damaged already that any vandalism would hardly be noticed,’ I said.
I thought that, so far as I was concerned, my little adventure was finished, for I was due to return to London after the weekend, but on the day after my visit to Fell Hall Innes received an invitation from Lord Maumbury for Innes, Mary and myself to dine at his house on the Wednesday of the following week. A woman member of the Bench was to partner me, and the others begged me to stay on in Strode Hilary and accept the invitation.
‘I’ve nothing to wear,’ said Mary, as women always declare on these occasions.
‘Your blue,’ I said. ‘I love you in that.’
‘With Mike’s trinkets,’ said Innes, ‘or had you forgotten them?’
‘There is a dinner gown at André’s. I saw it when you were buying a book in Bristol last week. It would set off the necklace and earrings beautifully. If we went today, perhaps they haven’t sold it yet,’ she said.
‘You won’t get it if I don’t like it.’
‘You will like it. Shall we go?’
So off they went. I was invited to accompany them, but women’s dress shops are no longer in my line, and I preferred to stay back and find my own amusement while they were gone. Scarcely could their car have turned the corner when a female newshound from the local paper rang up. She understood that I could give her a story, so might she call?
‘Mr Lockerbie is out,’ I said.
‘Aren’t you Mr Lockerbie?’
‘That’s my name, but I’m Michael Lockerbie. I’m a guest in the house.’
‘May I call in about half an hour? I’ve read your books.’
Well, I had no plans except to go out for some lunch later on, although Mary had told me there was plenty of food in the kitchen, so I agreed to see the girl, although to a male reporter I think I would have given the bird. She turned out to be a very pretty girl, neatly dressed in a dark brown frock with long coat to match, and she even wore a hat, although she soon removed this and tossed it on to the settee when she had taken an armchair.
I did not think Innes would grudge her a glass of his sherry, so I got it out and we settled down. She began by producing her credentials and then spoke flatteringly about my books.
‘Perhaps you’ll bring Fell Hall into the next one,’ she said brightly. ‘Oh, it’s all right. I’ve been to the police to get their story and they referred me to you. They don’t care how much publicity the story gets. They hope it will turn up an informer.’
I gave her my story, such as it was; she asked a number of questions which I answered as well as I could, and then I thought it was my turn.
‘What about this man-trap business?’ I said. ‘Do you usually go in for these anti-poaching devices in these parts?’
‘It’s likely to turn out nasty for at least two people,’ she answered soberly. ‘The victim’s leg may turn gangrenous. He’s got head injuries, too, and he may die. The hospital is doing all it can. I’ve been there, of course, but you know what they’re like; they won’t tell you a single thing if they can help it, but even if they amputate the leg it may not save the boy’s life. I gathered that much. If he dies there will be a manslaughter charge, I suppose.’
‘Murder, perhaps. Man-traps and spring-guns are highly illegal, and nobody can argue that there was no intention of committing bodily harm, because, obviously, there was. I mean, you don’t set a man-trap for nothing. Strangely enough, a young man I met when I was out walking mentioned man-traps and spring-guns.’
‘That sounds like guilty knowledge. Who was he?’
‘I have no idea. The victim of the man-trap, by the way, surely ought not to have been in the woods if they are preserved?’
‘That part of the estate is not preserved and, anyway, he had every right to be in the woods. His father owns them. The victim is the second son of the sheikh. You’ve heard of our sheikh, I suppose?’
‘His son? Good Lord! At what time of day is it supposed to have happened?’
‘Late in the evening, they think, and, of course, he wasn’t found until well after breakfast-time on the following morning.’
‘Wasn’t he missed?’
‘No. He’s at university and the family wasn’t expecting him home.’
‘I wonder why he decided to go home, then?’
‘Nobody knows yet. Even when he recovers consciousness — if he does — it will be some time before he can be questioned, the hospital told me.’
‘What was he doing in the woods, anyway?’
‘Taking a short cut from the station, or so it’s thought. He was involved in a car crash some time ago and has been banned from driving for a year, so they suppose he came by train and decided to walk the rest of the way.’
She took herself off at about eleven and I went upstairs to find myself something to read. Innes has a considerable library and I had no doubt that I could hit upon something light which would keep me occupied until I was ready to go out for a snack and a drink. I picked out Huntingtower and John McNab, both old favourites of mine, but as, downstairs again, I turned the pages, I soon decided that neither Dickson McCunn’s Scottish Presbyterian conscience nor Palliser-Yeates’s chivalry would suit my mood. After all, I had had my own little adventure and had no need for others at second hand.
I returned the books to their shelf and looked out of the library window. It offered the same view as that from the adjacent bedroom, for both were at the back of the house and overlooked the garden, the paddock, the church tower and the hills. Suddenly a fancy took me to see for myself the scene of the man-trap crime. The man-trap itself would no longer be there, but perhaps I should be able to make out the spot, for the man-trap would have been hidden on one of the tracks through the woods, no doubt, and the ground round about it trampled by the police and others. If anybody challenged me as a trespasser I would claim that I was a stranger and that I had seen no warning notices. My car was in the road, for Innes did not possess a double garage. I took my ashplant, got in and drove to the railway station, as that seemed the obvious point from which to begin my exploration.
As I approached the station, it occurred to me that a young man coming home by train would have had some luggage with him, and as, even by taking the short cut through the woods, he would have had a two-mile walk ahead of him to reach the house called Bourne Farley, which Innes had told me about and which was marked on the Ordnance map, he would hardly have burdened himself with luggage to carry.
Enquiring about this at the station might open up a talking point with a porter or, better still, the ticket-collector, I thought.
I parked the car and went into the booking hall. There was a ticket-collector at the entrance to the platform. Apparently a train was expected. I addressed him.
‘Is there a left-luggage office here?’
‘Apply at the booking office, sir.’
‘Thanks. Sad about the young Arab prince, eh?’
‘That’s as may be. Them as sets snares got no quarrel if they get caught their own selves.’
‘You mean he himself set that man-trap? That’s impossible. He would have known it was there.’
‘Then his dad set it. They lot be heathen savages, I wouldn’t wonder, and up to all manner of wickedness.’
‘Did you see the young man get off the train?’
‘And collected his ticket off him, as be my duty. First class it was. Money like water they foreigners got.’
‘Did he have luggage with him?’
‘Not many as travels first class is without luggage.’
‘I suppose he left it with the booking clerk.’
‘Being as it was two suitcases and a bag of golf-clubs, reckon he did. He couldn’t hardly get it all through the door here, which I had to take his ticket from between his teeth, he was that loaded.’
‘Isn’t there a station taxi he could have taken, instead of leaving his luggage and going off on foot?’
‘Ben Plush was otherwise engaged.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘He was engaged by Mr Okeford, who skip out of the six o’clock train quick and took up Ben Plush afore anybody else could get a look in, that being Mr Okeford’s way, and not a thought for anybody else’s convenience that might like to share Ben Plush with him. Lawyers is a selfish kind of bodies, to be sure.’
‘Was the young man disappointed at not getting the taxi?’
‘Said a few words in his own language, I makes no doubt.’
‘And dumped his luggage in your booking office, and went off on foot, only to get caught in that wretched man-trap, it seems. I wonder who it was really meant for if his father had had it set?’
‘What you after, mister?’ He looked at me out of suddenly hostile eyes.
‘Oh, nothing. Couldn’t his father have sent a car to pick him up?’
‘That ent no business of mine.’ The sound of the approaching train interrupted our conversation. I went to the booking-clerk’s window, but a couple of travellers, women intent on a day’s shopping in Exeter, no doubt, were taking their tickets and were having an unheated but persistent argument with the clerk about cheap day-returns. No doubt the train would wait for them. That was still one of the pleasant things about country branch-lines and country buses. Only country lawyers, it seemed, were disobliging. I did not wait to make any enquiries about left luggage, but returned to my car and drove into the village to find a pub.
Over my pint I asked the barmaid whether it was possible to take my car through the woods to reach Bourne Farley House. I had business there, I stated mendaciously. She summed me up before she answered my question and then, instead of replying to it, she said she supposed I was ‘one of they newspaper gentlemen from London’.
