The Other Devil's Name

by E. X. Ferrars

  “You mustn’t give up hope yet,” Mollie said. “He’s a clever child, you know. He may just be playing some kind of trick on you in revenge for the beating Jim gave him and he’s hiding somewhere. Then he’ll get tired of it one day and come home again.”

  Andrew did not know if she believed a word of it. A month was a long time for a child of eleven to be wandering the world on his own. But the words seemed to have at least a temporarily calming effect on Leslie Gleeson. Drawing a little away from Mollie, she mopped her eyes with sudden fierceness as if she held them to blame for her tears, then thrust her handkerchief into a pocket of her jeans and drank some more brandy.

  “Perhaps you’re right,” she said in a husky but controlled voice. “As you say, he’s clever. Perhaps he’s persuaded someone to look after him. Squatters or people like that, who wouldn’t ask too many questions. Yes, I’m sure you’re right. That’s what’s happened. Now I wanted to ask you, and you too, Constance, and of course Professor Basnett, if you’d come round to us this evening for a drink. It would be a help if you would. Jim and I—well, we hardly speak to one another nowadays, you know. We don’t quarrel or anything, but we just sit silent. In its way it’s rather frightening because it isn’t what Jim used to be like. And after this morning I know it’ll be worse than ever. So if you’d come round and just try to chat about ordinary things and make Jim join in, I’d be so grateful. It won’t be much fun, of course, but I know you understand. Will you come?”

  “Of course, dear,” Mollie said.

  “About six o’clock.” The girl stood up. “I’ll be seeing you then, Professor Basnett. I’m sorry I made such a scene the first time we met. I don’t know what you think of me. But I’ll be more sensible this evening. Goodbye.”

  Mollie saw her to the door.

  After she had gone Constance asked Andrew, “Where have you been all the morning?”

  “I had coffee with Naomi Wakeham,” he answered, “then a drink with Nicholas Ryan.”

  “And what did you make of the two of them?”

  By then Andrew had made up his mind that for the present he was going to say very little about what had passed through his mind that morning concerning Nicholas and Naomi, not to mention Mollie. But after a moment he said, “I didn’t have long with either of them. Only long enough to come to the conclusion that Naomi isn’t in the least worried about her husband’s disappearance because she can spend her time happily in a world of fantasy in which he’s either an agent for MI5 or a member of a gang of drug smugglers. And that’s much better than having a mere stockbroker around the house. And Nicholas—well, he’s a subtle character. I should say that he’s shrewd and that he might be devious and ruthless. On the other hand, he might be a quite generous and kindly young man. I didn’t make up my mind about him. But I was doing what I thought you wanted me to do, taking a quick look at your neighbours to see if any of them strikes me as a probable murderer. Now what about my giving one of my piercing glances at the two Miss Eckersalls? Is their father down under in Australia, or simply down under the earth?”

  “I think that could be arranged,” Constance said. “In fact, we could go round this afternoon. They’ve promised us some seedlings for the garden and I could say we’ve come round to collect them.”

  It was about three o’clock when Constance took Andrew across the lane to visit the Eckersall sisters. Before they went she told him a little about them.

  “There was a time when I thought their brother Kenneth and Mollie were going to get married,” she said. “He was here on a visit and he wanted it, but Mollie had settled in by then with Mrs. Ryan and she told me she thought it was too late to think of starting a new life on the other side of the world, leaving all her friends behind. But he still writes to her sometimes and sends her a Christmas card every year. It was sad in a way, I thought at the time, that she wouldn’t have him, because he was a pleasant sort of man, not exciting, but kindly and reliable and loyal. In fact, the right sort of man for a middle-aged woman to marry. But Mollie seemed to be perfectly happy where she was and wouldn’t move. I didn’t give her any advice, of course. I was still living in London and we used to see each other only occasionally. Mrs. Ryan used to let me come and stay in her house sometimes and that’s how I got to know Kenneth. And his sisters, and Mrs. Ryan, and the Peglers, though David Pegler had only just taken over the practice here. And this house and the Wakehams’ hadn’t even been built and the Gleesons hadn’t arrived yet. Their cottage was in a fairly derelict condition, lived in by a man called Banks who used to work for a scrap-metal dealer in Maddingleigh, with a wife who was usually three parts drunk, and he and his boss got sent to prison because it turned out the scrap they dealt in was mostly stolen. And his wife left Lindleham soon afterwards, and the cottage, which actually belonged to Mrs. Ryan, as she used to own all the property round here, was sold to the Gleesons, who’ve turned it into a very attractive place.”

  “What happened to the wife who drank?” Andrew asked.

  “I don’t know, and I don’t know what happened to her husband either after he got out of gaol. I don’t think his sentence was a very long one, but they never came back here or to Clareham. I don’t even know if they stayed together. Now let’s go over to the Eckersalls’, shall we? They’ve been away for some time, I think, walking in the Highlands, but I saw them in their garden this morning, so I know they’re back.”

  She fetched a trug from a garden shed behind the house in which to bring back the seedlings that she and Mollie had been promised, and set off with Andrew to the cottage on the other side of the lane.

  The same brown dog that had barked at them from the gateway when they had arrived the day before was there now and barked at them wildly as they approached it. He was a medium-sized dog of indeterminate breed and appeared to be ready at all costs to resist any attempt on their part to enter the garden. But when they showed that this was just what they intended to do he seemed to decide that his real duty was to make them welcome, wagged his tail and sniffed at Andrew’s trousers, then trotted beside him as they went up the path to the door.

  The cottage was a low white building with a few dark beams showing in its walls, small windows and a thatched roof. It had a large garden with apple trees in it, bright with blossom, rhododendrons coming into bloom with forget-me-nots covering the ground around them and borders of bushy shrubs. It was the kind of tangled-looking but basically orderly garden which only the skillful gardener can achieve. The front door of the cottage was painted white with a black wrought-iron knocker on it. Constance used it to announce their arrival.

  The door was opened by a short, sturdily built woman of about sixty with short, thick grey hair that stood up almost straight from her forehead, grey eyes, a square, deeply tanned face which was strongly lined with wrinkles and a wide, smiling mouth. She was wearing a brown smock-like garment that billowed loosely around her, no stockings, but a pair of emerald-green ankle socks and earth-caked canvas shoes. Constance introduced her to Andrew as Miss Jean Eckersall.

  She gave him a firm handshake, as strong as a man’s.

  “And you’ve come for the plants we promised you, haven’t you?” she said to Constance. “They’re just ready. We’ll go and collect them.” Then she turned in the small, low-ceilinged hall and suddenly bellowed, “Kate!”

  A faint voice called back from above, “Hallo!”

  “It’s Constance and a friend, come to collect some plants,” Jean Eckersall shouted. Her voice was vibrant.

  “I’ll be with you in a minute.”

  Heavy footsteps pounded across the ceiling overhead, then a woman appeared on the steep, very narrow staircase that curved upwards at the end of the little hall. Except that she was even shorter than her sister, looked perhaps two years older and wore cherry-red socks instead of bright green ones, it would have been hard to tell them apart. When Constance introduced her to Andrew she gave him the same kind of firm handclasp as her sister’s.

  Jean
went on: “We’ve been meaning to bring the plants over to you ourselves, but we’ve only just got back from Scotland. Been walking in Sutherland. Marvellous. Most beautiful scenery in the world. And surprisingly good weather, though cold, of course. Such fine people too. We got talking to an old man who seemed just to have his croft and a little bit of land with a few sheep on it and a collie, and he asked us where we came from and we told him from Berkshire and he said, ‘I mind those parts well, I was there in 1914.’ We felt as if somehow we’d slipped back at least a generation, but the next thing he was asking us was what we thought about the Economic Community, and he knew much more about it than we did. And he’d this dog he was thinking of putting down because he’s got his collie and didn’t need a second one, and this fellow’s such a mongrel, poor darling, he wasn’t worth anything. So we bought him for next to nothing and brought him home.” She bent and stroked the dog that had followed Constance and Andrew into the cottage. “You’re a darling, aren’t you, eh?” she said to it lovingly. “Not as handsome as our poor little Timmie, but we’re going to be very, very fond of you.”

  “What happened to Timmie?” Constance asked. “Did you board him in a kennel somewhere while you were away?”

  “You mean you didn’t hear?” Jean Eckersall said. “I thought everybody knew. No, that horrible child, Colin, killed him.”

  “Colin Gleeson?”

  “Yes, of course. Oh, a dreadful child. I know he’s disappeared and his poor mother’s frantic and all that sort of thing, and it’s all very tragic. But really he was a quite horrible child. Perhaps not his own fault, perhaps just a bad bringing up, but I don’t really believe that. I think some people are born with that sort of cruelty inside them.”

  “But what did he actually do?” Constance asked. “How did he kill Timmie?”

  “With a catapult. Come along, we’ll show you where it happened.”

  The sisters led the way through a door beside the staircase that opened into the garden. There was a lawn there that sloped downwards to a beech wood, and like the gardens on the other side of the lane, it was divided from that of the cottage next door by a high wooden fence. Clematis, roses, ivy and jasmine grew against the fence, and at one point there was a fine old chestnut, smothered just now in clusters of pale blossom. When he first saw it Andrew thought that it was growing in the sisters’ garden; then he realized that it actually stood in the garden next door and that only its branches hung over the fence.

  “You see,” Jean said, pointing up into the tree, “that awful child used to climb up into the tree and come over to our side and take potshots at birds and the squirrels that sometimes come up from the wood, and sometimes at Timmie. We told him again and again that he mustn’t do it, but actually he wasn’t a very good shot and we didn’t worry too much, though we told him we’d tell his parents if he went on. And then one day he hit Timmie with a great stone right on the side of his head. We saw it happen. And Timmie just lay down and died.” Her voice trembled for a moment. “And we both went straight round to the Gleesons and told them what had happened and that’s when Jim Gleeson gave Colin the beating that made him run away. And I know that’s terrible, but, well, what he did was terrible too, wasn’t it? I mean to our poor little Timmie, whom we both adored. I’m sure he meant as much as a child to us.”

  “And that’s why we went off to the Highlands,” Kate said, speaking for the first time, though in the same ringing voice as her sister. Andrew thought that perhaps they were in the habit of conversing with one another from one end of the garden to the other. “We couldn’t stand it here. It felt so empty. And we couldn’t bear the thought of just buying a new puppy, because that seemed so callous. But when we happened to come across this dear fellow up in Sutherland and heard he was going to be put down, it felt quite different, making an offer for him. And bless him, he’s taken to us both and we just love him. His name’s Mac, because we felt he ought to have a Scots name.”

  At hearing his name spoken, the dog gave a responsive wag of his tail.

  While the sisters had been talking Andrew had noticed what seemed to him a curious thing. Under the shadow cast by the chestnut tree, there were four mounds in a row, each of them about four feet long and a foot wide, like small graves. Three of them were covered in neatly mown grass and each had a small, carved headstone. On the farthest was the name Mamie, on the next to it Hans, and on the third Spot. The fourth grave, if graves were what they were, and a smooth area around it, could only recently have been covered with squares of turf, for these had not yet joined together, though they had been carefully laid in place, and there was no headstone.

  Jean Eckersall saw Andrew looking at it.

  “Yes, that’s Timmie’s grave,” she said. “This is our little cemetery. Some people think it’s absurd, but why shouldn’t dogs who’ve meant so much to one be properly buried and commemorated? We buried Timmie before we went away, but we only put the turf over his poor little grave yesterday and we haven’t ordered the headstone yet. But we’ll do it as soon as we can. He was a Yorkshire terrier, you know, quite small, but oh, so intelligent. And Spot was a fox terrier. He was killed in the lane by a car. I was quite sorry for the man who did it. He brought him in to us in his arms and was almost in tears. I don’t think it was his fault. Spot was never very good about traffic. And Hans was a dachshund who hadn’t been properly inoculated for distemper and who caught it and died. And Mamie was a Labrador bitch who died of old age. We loved her so much that when she died we thought we’d never have another dog, but a friend left Hans with us when she went on holiday, then asked us if we’d care to keep him, and by then, of course, we were in love with him, so it felt almost as if it had been meant. That’s how it’s been with all our dogs. It’s as if each one had some special claim on us. Now let’s see about those seedlings. We were going to give you some antirrhinums, weren’t we, and some African marigolds and some chrysanthemums? Come along.”

  She led the way to where some bedding plants had been neatly pricked out in rows. Her sister had brought a trowel, and Constance’s trug was soon generously filled.

  On the way home she said to Andrew, “Whenever I see the Eckersalls’ garden I feel that ours is hopelessly suburban, but neither Mollie nor I are very enthusiastic gardeners. What do you make of our neighbours?”

  “Batty in an amiable sort of way,” he said. “Or am I wrong?”

  “Wrong about them being batty, d’you mean, or about them being amiable?”

  “Well, speaking as one who’s only a very moderate sort of animal lover, I couldn’t help feeling that the death of their Timmie meant far more to them than the probable abduction and murder of Colin Gleeson, and on the whole I think that the murder of a human being does matter rather more than the admittedly shocking murder of a Yorkshire terrier. So I’m not as much in sympathy as perhaps I should be. About their being batty, they aren’t crazy enough to have taken revenge on the child for what he did, are they? I mean, that last grave is Timmie’s, is it, not Colin’s?”

  “Andrew!” Constance exclaimed faintly, and gave him a strange, frightened look. He had never seen an expression like it on her face before. “You aren’t serious about that, are you?”

  “The thought hadn’t occurred to you?”

  “No!”

  “You see, ever since you came to me yesterday with your mysterious letter I’ve had murder on my mind,” he said, “and I find I’m tending to see bodies everywhere. Not, I admit, till today, the body of a Yorkshire terrier, though it’s the only creature we’re quite sure is definitely dead. But it’s somehow confused my thinking. You don’t by any chance think, Constance, that that letter was a rather macabre sort of joke, written by someone who saw those women burying Timmie?”

  They had reached Cherry Tree Cottage and gone into the sitting room. From its window they could see Mollie weeding a rose bed.

  “I don’t understand,” Constance said. “What could be funny about that?”

  “Well, s
ome people have a rather black idea of humour,” Andrew replied, “and the Eckersall sisters do rather lay themselves open to ridicule. Of course, whoever wrote the letter couldn’t seriously have expected to get any money out of them.”

  Constance gave a little shudder.

  “Then what about the letter that ought to have gone into the envelope that was addressed to Mollie?” she asked. “Was that a joke too?”

  “Perhaps.”

  “And it went to the Eckersalls? Do you really think so?”

  “Well, no, I don’t.”

  “Then what do you think?”

  “How can I think anything till you tell me what you’re afraid is in that letter, Constance? I’ve an idea what it may have been, and I’ve an idea who may have got it, but how can I help you if you won’t trust me? By the way, about that child, Colin…”

  “Yes?”

  “Was he as awful as the Eckersall sisters suggested?”

  “I think he was a bit of a devil,” Constance said. “But I don’t know much about children. I daresay he would have grown out of it.”

  “You don’t think he may have stirred murderous hatred in anyone besides the Eckersalls?”

  “There was his stepfather, I suppose. They certainly didn’t love each other. I think Colin was rather good friends with Naomi Wakeham. And I think he and Nicholas got on pretty well. In fact, I think it was Nicholas who taught him how to use a catapult. Who else in the neighbourhood he may have infuriated I don’t know.” She gave Andrew a curious look. “Are you seriously thinking someone could have buried him in the dog’s grave while Kate and Jean were in Sutherland?”