The Other Devil's Name

by E. X. Ferrars

  He returned to the kitchen, cut a few slices off the joint of cold lamb that he found in the refrigerator, took two tomatoes out of a bag that he found in it, cut a thick slice of bread and buttered it, found a knife and fork and went back to the sitting room.

  The windows at each end of the room were slabs of darkness. He drew the curtains to hide them, feeling as he did so that he was shutting out some menace that lurked in the pretty garden among the delicate flowers of May, and settled down on the sofa to eat his supper.

  As he did so he thought of the small, old, lonely figure that he had left in the room upstairs and suddenly wondered how he would have been feeling in the situation in which he found himself if he and Constance had been twenty, even ten years younger. What would they have expected of one another? What uncertainties would they have felt? What would they have felt might be demanded of them? What extra comfort might they have been able to give one another? As it was, their age gave a kind of simplicity, a sort of uncomplicated serenity to their relationship.

  The cold lamb was tender and the hunk of bread was fresh. He wondered if he could have found any pickles in the kitchen if he had looked for them. A few pickled onions would have been pleasant. But it did not seem worth his while now to look for them. He finished his meal, put the empty plate down on a table near him and leant back in his chair, suddenly feeling extremely tired. That was one of the troubles about being as old as he was. You got tired so easily. Not that a day such as the one that he had just experienced might not have drained the vitality out of most people. He would go to bed soon. Meanwhile, he let his eyelids fall, feeling a sense of peaceful relaxation.

  The next moment he was sitting upright in his chair, startled by the thought that had just come into his mind. He had known that there was something that Naomi Wakeham had said to him about seeing Mollie that morning that had somehow felt wrong. He had doubted something that she had said, had felt that it contradicted something that someone else had said, yet he could not have told at the time what it was. Now he understood it.

  But it was only a very little thing and perhaps did not mean anything. All the same, at the moment it might be important to take note of anything that conflicted with anything else that he had been told as to Mollie’s actions. And what Naomi had said certainly conflicted, if only in a small way, with what had been said to him by Lorna Grace.

  The nurse had said that she had given Mollie a lift to the crossroads, had put her down there and had seen her start up Bell Lane. But Naomi had said that she had seen Mollie get out of the nurse’s car and remain standing at the crossroads, as if she could not make up her mind where she wanted to go, that in passing her Naomi had called out to her, offering a lift for the short way back to her home, that Mollie had shaken her head and that Naomi had then driven on, leaving Mollie where she was.

  Indeed, a very small conflict of evidence. But one or other of the two women was wrong, either by accident or deliberately. It seemed almost certain that it was by accident, and if so it was Naomi’s statement, which was slightly the more detailed, which Andrew thought was the more likely to be accurate. The nurse could easily have left Mollie at the roadside and simply have taken for granted, as she drove on, that Mollie was about to start up Bell Lane. She might not have looked back, in fact was unlikely to have done so, to make sure that Mollie had really gone. But suppose either Nurse Grace or Naomi Wakeham was lying deliberately, what could that mean?

  Andrew could not think of any answer to that, and relaxing once more, he let his eyes close and drifted into a half-doze, out of which he was startled by another knock at the front door.

  This time it was Jean and Kate Eckersall. As they had been when he had seen them before, they were wearing their voluminous brown smocks and one had emerald-green ankle socks on and the other cherry-red. Their dog was on the doorstep between them. Andrew could not remember which of the sisters was which, but he thought it was Jean who wore the green socks and who said now in a cautious whisper, quite unlike her normal hearty bellow, “I know it’s late, terribly late, but we couldn’t go to bed before coming over to see how dear Constance was, and we saw there was a light in the window downstairs, so we knew someone was up still, and we thought we’d just look in to say that if there’s anything we can do, she should rely on us.”

  Andrew imagined that there had probably never been a time when so many people had been anxious to do things for Constance, but the chances were that she would turn to none of them. The dog, showing great pleasure at meeting Andrew again, looked as if he too would gladly offer help.

  “It’s very kind of you,” he said. Then because it seemed the polite thing to do, he added, “Won’t you come in?”

  “Oh dear, we really shouldn’t,” Jean went on in her soft, whispering voice. It was as if she felt that if she allowed herself to speak in her normal voice it might alarm somebody. “We don’t want to be a nuisance. But the police have been to see us, asking questions, and we thought perhaps we should tell Constance about it—that is, if she can bear to see anyone just now. If she’d sooner not, of course we shall understand.”

  “She’s gone up to bed,” Andrew said, “but perhaps you can tell me about the police, then I can tell her in the morning.”

  “Well, if you really think so…”

  Walking almost on tiptoe, they crept into the sitting room. The dog followed them in and started to investigate the room.

  “Oh dear, I do hope you don’t mind him,” Jean said.

  “Not in the least.”

  Andrew did not feel that they were expecting to be offered a drink, so he did not do so.

  They sat down in chairs on either side of the fireplace.

  “You see, we’ve got a theory,” Jean said. As Andrew had noticed before, she was very much the more articulate of the two. “We didn’t tell the police about it because we only thought of it after they’d gone. At the time we’d really nothing to tell them. We hadn’t seen Mollie since we got back from the Highlands. And they just told us the dreadful news and asked if we’d seen her in the lane this morning, or anyone else, and things like that. And they asked where we’d been all the morning ourselves. That seemed extraordinary, but of course we do understand they’ve got their duty to do and we realize that Kate and I together would have been capable of overpowering Mollie and bundling her body into our car and putting her in the stream, so it was natural they should want to check on us. And they don’t know us, so they can’t take for granted we’d no possible motive for doing such a thing. But after all, as we pointed out to them, if we did murder her we’d never have done anything so risky as taking her down to the stream and leaving her there. We’ve plenty of room to bury her in our garden and we’re both quite accustomed to digging. We thought that argument made an impression on them, even though we’ve no alibis.”

  “I’m sure it did,” Andrew said. “And you were at home all the morning, were you?”

  “Yes, and we were together in the garden, which is an alibi of sorts, I suppose, but they wouldn’t rely on it, would they, any more than they rely on the ones that are given by husbands and wives, because of course we’d lie to protect each other.”

  “I wonder, were you in your front garden or out at the back?” he asked.

  Kate made one of her rare remarks. “As a matter of fact, a bit of both. But why?”

  “Well, if you were near your gate,” he said, “I was curious if you happened to see a grey Vauxhall parked near it. Some time around half past eleven, I should think. I’ve been told about it and it’s just possible that it might have something to do with Mollie’s murder.”

  Both sisters shook their heads.

  “I didn’t see anything,” Jean said.

  “Neither did I,” said Kate.

  “Do you think you’d have seen it if it had been there?”

  They looked at each other uncertainly, then Jean said, “I think so. Of course, one can’t be sure of a thing like that. We were coming and going. Who was i
n it?”

  “A man. That’s all I know.”

  They shook their heads again.

  “We didn’t see him,” Jean said. “But if he was there only for a short time it might easily have been when we were out at the back. But d’you know, the police asked us the same question and they asked us too if we’d a typewriter and when we said we had they wanted each of us to type a specimen on it, but they didn’t tell us why. What’s this man in the car supposed to have had to do with Mollie’s murder?”

  “Perhaps nothing at all,” Andrew said. “I think it’s just that he might have seen her come up the lane, perhaps alone or perhaps with someone else. That might tell us something.”

  “Yes, I understand. As a matter of fact…” It was Kate who spoke now and she stopped, looking again at her sister as if for permission to go on.

  Jean nodded and said, “Yes, there’s that.”

  “As a matter of fact,” Kate repeated, “a man who used to live next door before the Gleesons bought the cottage and put in central heating and everything, a man called Banks, who went to prison for receiving stolen scrap iron, used to have a grey Vauxhall. But I can’t think what he’d have been doing here. He left Lindleham at least three years ago and we haven’t seen him since. There must be lots of grey Vauxhalls about. This man had probably just lost his way.”

  “Yes,” Andrew agreed. “But you said you’d a theory about Mollie’s death.”

  “I’m afraid it’s rather complicated,” Jean said apologetically.

  “I’d be very interested to hear about it, however,” he said.

  “Well, there’s only one possible reason we can think of why anyone should want to murder Mollie,” Jean went on, “and that’s that quite accidentally she found out something about somebody which was very dangerous for him. I say accidentally, because I’m sure if she understood what she knew she’d have gone to the police with it. But we think we know what it was.”

  Looking at her blankly, Andrew wondered if Mollie could have told the sisters about the anonymous letter, which Constance thought Mollie might have mentioned to the man who murdered her. He did not think it was likely. Besides, Jean had said that they had not seen Mollie since they had returned from the Highlands. Of course, that might not be true.

  “Can you tell me about it?” he asked.

  “It’s about that child Colin,” Jean said. “We’ve always had a kind of feeling that Jim Gleeson might have murdered him. We’ve never said anything about it before because, as I said, it was just a feeling. We never had any real evidence. But you see, it seems so probable. After all, the child is certainly dead, and infuriating as he was to a lot of people, I think the only person who really hated him was Jim, and the story that he ran away could so easily have been made up to calm poor Leslie’s suspicions. And we think Mollie must have known something about it without realizing it, but today she said something that frightened him. She did see him this morning, didn’t she?”

  “I believe they met in Dr. Pegler’s surgery,” Andrew said, wondering how the sisters knew this.

  Jean explained it. “We thought they must have met because the police asked us if we’d seen Jim Gleeson in the lane, or Nicholas Ryan, or anybody else. But of course, it couldn’t have been Nicholas.”

  “Why not?” Andrew asked.

  “For the same reason it couldn’t have been us,” Jean replied. “He’s got a great big garden. I said if we wanted to dispose of a body we’d do it in our garden, didn’t I, and not risk being seen taking it along the lane to the stream. The same applies to Nicholas. His garden’s much bigger than ours and there’d have been no one in the house but Mrs. Grainger to see what he was doing, and anyway there are lots of places in the garden you can’t even see from the house. We know that quite well because we used to visit Mrs. Ryan quite often while she was still able to see visitors. But the Gleesons have a fairly small garden, so it would have been quite a risk for Jim to bury Mollie there. Besides, Leslie would have been sure to see what he was doing and I don’t think she would go along with murder.”

  “I believe she was in Maddingleigh at some sale in the town,” Andrew said. The Eckersalls’ theory intrigued him, even though he felt that there was something the matter with it. “Suppose you’re right that Gleeson killed the boy, how do you suppose he disposed of the body?”

  The sisters exchanged another of their almost conspiratorial glances, then Jean said, “That’s really the most interesting part of our theory.”

  “You think you know?”

  “Have you been to the Gleesons’ house?”

  “Yes, for drinks yesterday evening.”

  “And did you notice a rose bed outside their sitting room window?”

  “No, I can’t say I did.”

  “Well, there is one there, but the roses were only planted in it about a month ago. Just about the time Colin disappeared. But quite the wrong time of year for planting roses, so of course they’ve come to nothing. Leslie asked me about it at the time. She said she was sure it was wrong, but that Jim insisted on doing it. And of course he’d had to dig the bed over beforehand, and some more digging wouldn’t have looked suspicious. And what we think is that if you dug down deep enough between those roses you might find Colin’s body buried there.”

  “How was it that Leslie didn’t see him do it?” Andrew asked.

  “She goes out quite often in the evenings,” Jean replied. “The Women’s Institute and I think she goes to pottery classes and that sort of thing. He’d have had plenty of time to do it.”

  Andrew had a curious experience at that moment. The faces of the two sisters seemed suddenly to dissolve into something that he found startlingly frightening. For an instant the two square, tanned, good-natured faces might have been those of witches, brooding over a spell, searching his expression to see how it was working. But almost at once the absurd impression faded.

  “You see, we think Mollie may have spoken to him about his roses,” Jean said. “She could have said something quite innocent, like what had he been using for fertilizer, and he could have thought it was a hint that she knew what he’d got buried there. So he decided he’d got to kill her. But he couldn’t put her body into the rose bed too or suddenly start digging in some other part of the garden without it seeming peculiar. But if, as you say, Leslie was in Maddingleigh this morning, he could have persuaded Mollie to go into the house with him for a drink or something, killed her there, put her body in the boot of his car and driven off with it and got rid of it in the stream. Don’t you see? It all fits together.”

  Andrew thought that it fitted together remarkably well. But just then the brown dog, which had been lying peacefully at his feet as if he felt particularly at home there, got up, stretched and laid his head on Andrew’s knee, expecting to be petted. Automatically Andrew gave him a scratch behind his ears and the dog gave a responsive wag of his tail.

  It brought a memory sharply back to Andrew, the memory of four little graves in a row under a chestnut tree, all with headstones except one, and all except one with well-mown turf over them. But on one the turf had only just been laid on what must have been freshly dug earth. Jim Gleeson was not the only person who had been doing some digging recently.

  When the Eckersalls had gone Andrew took his plate out to the kitchen, then went to bed. He slept restlessly. Usually he slept very well, but that night it was only in snatches and they were hagridden by dreams. The dreams in themselves did not seem to be significant or disturbing, but they made his sleep seem shallow. In one of his waking moments he wondered if Mollie had been unaware of what was to happen to her, or if for an instant she had seen the devil looking at her out of eyes that she knew.

  Some time in the night he realized that a wind had arisen that battered his windows and drove an occasional spattering of rain against them. So the fine weather of the last week had come to an end. When he got up in the morning it was not raining, but the sky was grey, the wind was still blowing, and he saw that much o
f the blossom of the cherry tree by the gate had been torn off and lay in drifts on the grass below it. The time was eight o’clock. There was no sound of Constance moving about in the house, so he decided to go down and get breakfast for them both. He shaved, showered and dressed in trousers, a shirt and a pullover and went downstairs.

  He made coffee and toast and while he was doing it helped himself to a small portion of some cheese that he found in the refrigerator. For him that was the proper way to begin a day. He had now had his small helping of protein, which he was sure would do him good. He had no need to take Constance’s breakfast up to her, however, for as he was arranging it on a tray she appeared in the kitchen doorway.

  She was in the dark-blue silk dressing gown in which he had seen her the evening before. Her face was colourless and seemed more deeply lined than he had ever noticed, and there was less than the usual brightness in her eyes. He wondered if she had had any sleep at all, or indeed if she had been to bed. Perhaps she had sat up all night in the chair by the window, listening to the rising wind and watching the raindrops slithering down the glass.

  “I’d have got breakfast,” she said. “You shouldn’t have bothered.”

  “That’s all right,” he answered. “Where would you like it? In here, or shall I take it into the dining room?”

  “Let’s have it in here.”

  She advanced into the kitchen and sat down at the table. Andrew dismantled the tray that he had prepared, poured out coffee for them both, moved toast and marmalade towards her and sat down also. She picked up her cup, holding it in both hands as if she wanted to feel the warmth of it, and sipped a little.

  “What did those people want last night?” she asked. “Naomi and the Eckersalls.”

  “Officially they all came to offer sympathy,” he said, “but I’ve a feeling they wanted information too. And whether that was just normal curiosity or something more I wouldn’t like to say.”

  “D’you know, Andrew, you’ve a very suspicious mind,” she said. “I’ve never noticed it about you before. What more might it be?”