The Other Devil's Name

by E. X. Ferrars

  She gave a despondent little smile. “You make it sound so ridiculous. I think you always had a knack of doing that when I had extravagant ideas. It was probably very good for me. Let’s go back to Mike Wakeham.”

  “But you’re still convinced Nicholas is the murderer. I’m sorry about that. I rather like him.”

  “So many murderers are said to have been likeable.”

  “And his motive, I suppose, was that he was Naomi’s lover. Yet he didn’t speak of her as if he was in love with her, so much so that he’d commit murder for her sake.”

  “That could have been cunning.”

  “True. But what do we do if he has an alibi for the time of Wakeham’s disappearance? Change the murderer or change the victim?”

  “We might leave that, I think, till we know whether or not he’s got an alibi.” She stood up. “I’m going to call on the Gleesons.”

  “Why the Gleesons?”

  “Because they know Nicholas much better than I do, and their cottage is almost opposite the gates of Lindleham House. They may have seen him come and go at that time. Of course, if they didn’t see him it doesn’t necessarily mean he wasn’t there. He might have been deliberately making himself inconspicuous.”

  “Mrs. Grainger, the housekeeper, would know whether or not he was there.”

  “But we can hardly go and question her about it, can we? Not at the moment, anyway, when he’s in the house and showing his prospective purchasers round it. No, I’m going to the Gleesons’. As it’s Saturday, I think Jim will be there as well as Leslie. Do you want to come with me?”

  “I was thinking of going to talk to Naomi. I want to ask her if the man she saw in the grey Vauxhall could have been the man called Banks who used to live in the Gleesons’ cottage.”

  “What’s the point? You know you can’t rely on anything Naomi tells you. Why not come with me?”

  “If you want me to.”

  He stood up too.

  “Better get a coat,” she said. “It looks as if it might start raining at any time.”

  It had not started raining as they set out, but dark masses of cloud were pushing their way across the sky and the treetops bowed and complained in the wind. It was much colder than it had been the day before. When Constance rang the bell at the Gleesons’ front door there was no answer. She rang it twice more and the sound of it ringing inside the cottage was clearly audible, but still no one came to the door.

  “They’re out,” Constance said. “We may as well go home.”

  As she said it the first scattered drops of a shower began to fall. At the same time Andrew became aware that he could hear voices coming from somewhere near, raised, angry voices. It seemed to him that they were coming from behind the cottage.

  “I believe they’re out at the back,” he said. “Do you want to go round and see if they’re there?”

  Constance listened for a moment, then nodded and led the way along the paved path that skirted the cottage to the garden at the back of it. There they found Jim and Leslie Gleeson facing each other across the rose bed that the Eckersalls had described to Andrew. They were shouting at each other, unconscious of the appearance of Constance and Andrew round the corner of the cottage, and disputing about a big hole that had been dug in the rose bed. Since Gleeson had a spade in his hand, it seemed likely that it was he who had done the digging.

  “Stop it, stop it!” Leslie shouted at him. “Are you mad? Have you gone out of your mind?”

  “I’m only doing what you wanted me to do!” he shouted back at her. “You weren’t going to give me any peace till I’d done it.”

  Though they were both shouting the wind had the effect of muting their voices.

  Jim’s face was red from anger and from the exertion of digging. Leslie’s had a painful pallor.

  “I didn’t mean it!” she yelled, her words almost carried away by the wind. “Haven’t I been telling you I didn’t mean it?”

  “You did mean it, you meant every bloody word of it, and there’s only one way to prove to you what a crazy bitch you are and that’s to dig the whole place up and show you there’s nothing here but some miserable roses.”

  “But it’s only what the Eckersalls said about its being the wrong time to plant roses, and I didn’t mean—”

  “Bloody Eckersalls!” he roared. “Snooping, gossiping old bitches, putting crazy ideas in your head. You think that son of yours is buried down here and I’m going to go on digging the whole place up till you can see there’s nothing here but roses. If I tell you he isn’t here you won’t believe a word of it, you’ll go on giving me those queer looks you’ve been giving me lately and saying why did I suddenly have to dig the place over—”

  “Jim, Jim!” she shrieked at him. “I just couldn’t understand why you dug it up when you’d hurt your back. And you oughtn’t to be digging now. It’ll only make your back worse.”

  “My back’s giving me hell, let me tell you! But I’m going to dig the place up and chuck the roses away and then you can do what you like with the big hole outside your window. I’ll dig it up, but I’m damned if I’ll fill it in again. I’ll leave it as it is to remind you that you can just go so far and no farther, telling your husband he’s a murderer.”

  Her temper seemed suddenly to go completely out of control. “Murderer, murderer! Go on, dig, dig! I’ll stand and watch you! You think if you shout enough and talk about your back and curse me, I’ll go away and you won’t have to finish digging. You won’t have to go as deep down as a grave. Go on—why have you stopped digging?”

  For a moment he seemed taken aback, then grasping his spade, he stepped down into the hole and started digging with wild energy, tossing earth out to right and left of it.

  Constance chose that moment to walk forward.

  “Leslie, I’m afraid we heard most of that,” she said. “We tried ringing at the front door, but didn’t get any answer, then we heard your voices from round here and there was something we wanted to ask you, so we came looking for you. We weren’t snooping, but I gather you’ve been listening to the Eckersalls, and now Jim’s digging up your flower bed to prove he didn’t bury poor little Colin there. But you don’t really believe he did, do you?”

  As she spoke heavier rain began to fall. Jim Gleeson straightened up, thrusting his spade into the soil, letting go of it and leaving it standing there. He stepped out of the hole.

  “She believes it all right,” he said. “She’s believed I did him in ever since that brat ran away. And I’m tired of hearing him called poor little Colin. He knew what he was doing, or he thought he knew. He was out to make as much trouble as he could for everyone. If he’s had to pay a worse price for it than he reckoned, it’s his own bloody fault.”

  Leslie, who was wearing only jeans and a sweater, gave a shiver as the rain, or it might have been the meaning of her husband’s words, chilled even the heat of her anger.

  “Come inside out of the rain,” she said. “If it gets any worse that bed will soon be mud and Jim won’t be able to dig anyway. I’ve been telling him not to, but he won’t listen to me.”

  She pushed open the French window behind her that led straight into the sitting room. With its low, beamed ceiling, the low, heavy clouds in the sky and the rain which was now falling in a torrent, it was very dark. The bowl of lilac that had stood in the great open hearth when Andrew had last been here was still where it had been, but the flowers were fading.

  Gleeson followed the others in, pausing in the doorway to kick off the gum boots he was wearing.

  “She told me not to, but all the same she wanted me to do it,” he said. Surprisingly, he put an arm round Leslie’s shoulders and drew her against him. “And I’ll finish the job presently. That’ll be the best thing for both of us. But I’m afraid we both rather lost our heads about it. Sorry, love.”

  She resisted him for a moment, then let him hold her.

  “Yes, we’ve both been stupid,” she said. “It’s the strain. You don’t kn
ow how awful it is, Constance. One completely loses one’s sense of proportion. I told Jim what the Eckersalls said about the roses and he thought I meant—well, perhaps I did mean it, but only for a moment. I never expected him to rush out and start digging up the bed.”

  “Look, let’s stop talking about it,” he said. He let her go as if his mood of affection had soon faded. “I know I planted those roses at the wrong time. It was simply because they were given to me. A chap in the office told me he’d been digging some of his up and was going to throw them away and plant something else, so I said why not give them to me, I’ll see if they’ll go in an empty bed we’ve got. That’s all there was to it. You said there was something you wanted to ask us, Constance.”

  They had all found places to sit down except Gleeson, who had remained standing just inside the French window, which he had not closed behind him. Rain was splashing on to the doorstep and on to his feet, but he took no notice of it. It made him look as if he did not expect his visitors to stay long. Andrew remembered how he had given the same impression the last time that they had met. He also remembered that on that occasion he had thought that there was something brutal about the man’s heavily handsome features and had wondered what a child might be driven to do who was at his mercy.

  “I wanted to ask you something about Mike Wakeham,” Constance said. “Do you know exactly when he disappeared?”

  “Mike?” Leslie said, surprised. “Exactly when? What day of the week, d’you mean?”

  “Yes, it was about three weeks ago, wasn’t it?” Constance answered. “But I wondered if you could pinpoint it a little more accurately.”

  “Why?” Gleeson asked harshly.

  “It would be a bit complicated to explain,” Constance said, putting on a vagueness that was not like her. “But do you remember?”

  Leslie frowned in thought, then shook her head.

  “I know it happened a week or so after Colin went missing,” she said, “and really that was all I could think of at the time. Naomi came here one day and told me how Mike had disappeared and I don’t think I was very kind to her. I thought the obvious thing was for her to ditch him as soon as she could. He was no good. But I was so obsessed with our trouble about Colin that I wasn’t as sympathetic as I might have been. But wait a minute!” She took her head in her hands, trying to concentrate. “Colin disappeared four weeks ago tomorrow, which was a Sunday, and the next Sunday I went to church. I don’t often go, but that day I wanted to, and it was when I got home that Naomi came in and told me about Mike. But of course that wasn’t the day he’d gone. I think it was on the Friday before. He’d left for work as usual on the Friday morning and simply hadn’t come back for the weekend. Yes, I think it was that Friday, which makes it three weeks ago yesterday. Is that what you wanted to know?”

  “Yes, but I wonder if you can tell me something else,” Constance said. “Do you know if Nicholas was here at the time?”

  “Now what are you getting at?” Gleeson demanded. “Are you trying to connect Nicholas with Mike’s disappearance?”

  “I said it would be a bit complicated to explain,” Constance said coolly. “Don’t answer if you don’t feel like it.”

  “I don’t feel like it,” Gleeson said. “I don’t like getting mixed up in things I don’t understand.”

  “I understand it’s got something to do with Mollie,” Leslie said. “It has, hasn’t it, though I can’t see how. And I’d help if I could. Let me think. No, Nicholas wasn’t here that weekend. When I was starting out for church I met Mrs. Grainger leaving for the village too and I gave her a lift and she told me Nicholas would be coming down the next weekend to try to get the agents in Maddingleigh to do something active about selling the house. She said when he did sell it she was going to live with a sister in Nottingham, and though she’d be sorry to leave after so many years, she was hoping it would be soon, because it was very unsettling not knowing how long she was going to stay on. So he wasn’t here the weekend Mike went away.”

  “Does that satisfy you?” Gleeson asked, looking at Constance with a mixture of curiosity and hostility. “I wish I knew what you’re getting at.”

  “Nothing, if Nicholas wasn’t here,” Constance answered. “Just an idea I had that seems not to have been a very good one.”

  “I know how it is,” Leslie said. “When something happens like Mollie’s death or Colin’s disappearance, you start thinking the most unlikely, disconnected things, because it seems to you that you must be able to make sense of it if only you try hard enough. You can’t be just left groping forever in a horrible cloud that won’t go away. I know one gets desperate and muddled and unreasonable.”

  “The rain’s stopping,” Gleeson said, turning to look out into the garden. “I’m going out to finish the digging.” He started struggling back into his gum boots.

  Leslie leapt from her chair. “Don’t! Don’t do it! Didn’t I tell you I knew it was all nonsense about the roses and that he isn’t there?”

  “By this evening you’ll be sure again that he is, if I haven’t given you proof positive that he isn’t.”

  “I tell you, stop it! You’ll hurt your back.”

  “To hell with my back. A lot you care about it.”

  He strode out into the rain, which now was falling only thinly. As he stepped down into the hole in the flower bed Leslie dashed out after him, imploring him to forget that she had ever dreamt that her child might be buried there. Constance met Andrew’s eyes, gave him a little signal with her head that it was time for them to leave the cottage, and the two of them let themselves out by the front door and started along the lane.

  “So much for my theory,” Constance said. “Nicholas wasn’t here. That seems pretty definite.”

  “I never felt too happy about the idea,” Andrew admitted. “But d’you know, I’ve a feeling there’s some obvious fact we haven’t spotted that might tell us all we need to know. You know how it is in our field when one’s got a hunch that something would fit but one hasn’t got quite the experimental evidence to clinch it. Well, that’s how I’m feeling now.”

  But he was quite at sea when he tried to think what the missing fact might be. As they walked back to Cherry Tree Cottage he would have liked to suggest to Constance that the two of them should get into her car and drive a good distance away from Lindleham till they found a nice pub in some peaceful spot and there have a good lunch with a bottle of wine and talk once more about the interests that they had shared in the old days and let the subject of murder rest.

  But of course it would be shockingly insensitive to make any such suggestion, and anyway, peaceful spots could be deceptive. What could have looked more peaceful than Lindleham during the past day or two before the wind had got up and the heavy shower of rain had turned the ditches on each side of the lane into muddy little rivers? If he and Constance were to arrive for their lunch in some spot softly encircled by the downs, remote and quiet, with larks singing in the sky above, it might turn out that the local police were trying to arrest a bank robber who had taken refuge there and was holding the landlord of the inn and his wife and family as hostages. Anything was possible these days.

  He thought of the time when it had been a matter of pride to the Briton that our police went unarmed, and then of the pictures of them so often seen now on television armed to the teeth with rifles and revolvers. Alas, for the old days!

  With weeping and with laughter

  Still is the story told

  How well Horatius kept the bridge

  In the brave days of old…

  That miserable Horatius was getting mixed up with his thoughts again. Not that he could imagine why anyone should weep or laugh at that particular story. There was nothing very funny about it, and as the man had been successful, there was nothing to weep over either. And he had never believed that those old days had been any more brave than the frightened days of today. Under the surface very little changed. If terrorism and violent crime were on the increas
e and if traffic accidents were as lethal as a mediaeval plague, at least tuberculosis and many other diseases had been conquered, and who knew, a cure even for cancer might be just round the corner. On the whole, given a choice, he would prefer to live in the world of today rather than those as comparatively recent as his own childhood.

  A car was coming along the lane from the crossroads. It was a police car, and as Constance and Andrew were just about to enter the cottage, it stopped at the gate. Superintendent Stonor and Sergeant Southby got out of it.

  Coming up the path towards the door, the superintendent said in a sombre tone, “Good morning.”

  It was less a greeting than a mere announcement of his presence, in case there should be any doubt about the matter.

  At the sound of it a quick look of apprehension came into Constance’s eyes, but she did not ask him there on the doorstep what had brought him.

  “Come in,” she said, and opened the door and led the way in.

  In the hall, without speaking, the men took off their raincoats and Constance took them and hung them up on pegs on the wall, then led the way into the sitting room.

  “Sit down,” she said, and herself sat down on a straight-backed chair as if she felt it would give her more support than any of the more comfortable chairs when the blow came which she had certainly guessed, from the looks on the faces of the two men, was about to fall. As before, Andrew had the feeling that Stonor was glad to see him there. He seemed to be at a loss how to deal with the small, fragile yet powerful woman facing him.

  Sitting down, he said, “I’m bringing you more bad news, Professor.”

  “So I supposed,” Constance said.

  “Yes, I—I imagined you would.” He spoke hesitantly. “I thought you should hear it from us, and then perhaps you can answer some questions I would like to ask you.”

  “Please go on,” she said.

  “This morning, at nine o’clock, when a Mrs. Jolson, who is Dr. Pegler’s daily maid, arrived at his house as usual,” he said, “she found Dr. Pegler dead. He was lying on the floor beside his desk in a room that he appears to have used as an office. He had been stabbed several times with some long, narrow-bladed knife, which had been removed. His wounds were very like your sister’s. He bled very heavily. In fact, it may have been the bleeding that killed him, rather than any of the stab wounds.” He paused; then as Constance only stared at him as if it were totally beyond her to say anything, he added, “There’s something else I should tell you. We have positive proof that he was your blackmailer.”