Fell Murder

by E. C. R. Lorac

  “I can imagine it. Doesn’t sound too good. I’d thought of looking Bob up. I’ve got a few things of Mary’s which he might like to have. He was a good father to her.”

  “You’ll have to do as you think best about that. Bob’s queer these days, as I’ve told you. He and I were good friends once, but now if I pass him on the fell he won’t speak to me. I suppose he blames me as bailiff for the trouble over his rent, but it wasn’t my fault. I’d no word in the arrangement he made with your father originally, and I did my best to ease things, but I couldn’t move your father.”

  Richard Garth laughed again, the same bleak, unmirthful sound.

  “No. I bet you couldn’t. What’s the betting my old devil of a parent just bided his time until he could get back on Bob because his daughter married me? It would have been typical of Father to nurse a grudge for twenty years before venting his spleen.”

  “I don’t know,” said Staple slowly, chewing a straw he had picked. “After you left, Bob Ashthwaite went up to see your father, and they had it out, fair and square. Bob said he didn’t want a Garth for his son-in-law—it was no fault of his that Mary had gone and made a fool of herself, and she could have done better than marry a Garth. Oddly enough, your father took that quietly, as though he understood it. I’m told they cursed one another long and strong—but Bob went back to Farfell and went on farming it, and your father never said a word about concluding the tenancy. Bob Ashthwaite was a good tenant, of course: farmed his land well and kept it clean.”

  “Yes. Suited the old man to keep him on—and then when he could conveniently do it, the old devil broke him: quite typical.”

  “Nay, lad, you’re over hard. Your father’s got some good qualities in him, for all that he can be a bitter enemy when he’s lost his temper. By and large, he’s been a good landlord. I’ve worked for him these thirty years and there’s not much I don’t know about him. He’s an old man now—eighty-three come Michaelmas, and most men get difficult when they’re old. Come to that, you mayn’t be too easy yourself, Richard.”

  “Oh, I’m all right when I’m away from the subject of my own kith and kin. You can’t expect me to take a charitable view of my father’s dealings. As a boy, I saw him killing my mother—killing her slowly by bullying and hectoring. When I was grown to a man and stood up to him, he cursed me and kicked me out—and cursed my wife to my face. I often wonder I didn’t kill him for that.”

  John Staple moved uneasily against the wall, and buttoned his coat up closer. “The wind’s keen up here, Richard, and I get plagued with rheumatism. I’d better walk on. I was going to look at those ewes up on the fell side. Come along with me and then come back to tea. I can give you a good meal for all that I’m a bachelor—farm butter and home-cured ham, and as many eggs as you fancy. More than you’ll get in a hotel these days.”

  Richard Garth chuckled, and his face was gentle again, his eyes affectionate. “Good old John! Many’s the good meal I’ve had with you, and I’ve not forgotten them—but I won’t come home with you now, thanks all the same. I want to walk, and I reckon I can get on to Ingleton before bedtime, stay the night there and carry on over Holmboro’ in the morning and down into Sleydale. I’ve only got a couple of days to spare, and I’ve promised myself a good tramp. I want to see it all again—see it and smell it and listen to it.”

  “As you will, lad. If ever you want a bed you can have one with me and welcome. Come when you will, and stay as long as you like.”

  “Thanks. I’ll take you at your word one day—if I live long enough. Is that inn outside Ingleton still functioning—the Wheatsheaf, wasn’t it?”

  “Aye. You can get a bed there if you want one. Matt Hodges is the landlord—the son of old Nathaniel. Can you see that man down in the dales there—walking towards the old barn?”

  “Yes. I can see him all right—why?”

  “That’s your brother, Charles. He’s living at home, at Garthmere, now. He was out in Malaya, and he got away to Java and then to Australia. Lost everything he possessed, and came back to England with the clothes he stood up in, and nothing else. He helps with your sister on the home farm.”

  “I hope he likes it. Does the old man pay him—or just let him work for nothing and curse him at intervals?”

  John Staple chuckled. “That I can’t tell you. I know Mr. Garth has his own ideas about the war like he has his own ideas about everything else: he says a few bitter things about letting the Japs get Singapore—but Charles puts up with it for his own convenience. He’ll be surprised when he hears you’ve been home, will Charles.”

  “He needn’t hear, John.” Richard Garth turned and faced the older man. “I told you I didn’t come home to see my family: they’re nothing to me, nor I to them—less than nothing. You can forget you’ve seen me, John. Don’t tell any of them. Promise me that, for old times’ sake.”

  “If you ask it, I’ll promise—but you’re wrong in saying that you’re nothing to them. You’re the heir to Garthmere, Richard. The entail still holds. All this will be yours one day—and you care for the land, you’ve admitted it.”

  “Yes. I care for the land, but not in the sense of owning it—not the usual sense, anyway. I do own it, because I’ve remembered it—every wall and field, every gill and beck, every fell side and copse. I’ve come back to renew that ownership—to prove to myself that memory hasn’t played me false. But as for living at Garthmere Hall and all that that involves—no. I’ve no use for it.”

  He paused a moment, staring out towards the Langdale Pikes, his shaggy brows knitted in thought. “The system of land tenure we’ve got in this country is all wrong,” he said. “It’s a remnant of feudalism, its usefulness outgrown. It isn’t that I don’t care about the land hereabouts. I care for it all the more that I’ve been away from it so long, but the system’s all wrong. Anyway, it’s a system that’s passing. Maybe I’ll come back here to live one day—if I don’t get blown sky high on a torpedoed tanker—but I don’t want to live at the Hall, and carry on the bad old tradition. My father liked owning things, whether it were land or cattle or his own family. He reckoned he owned us all—but he made a mistake.”

  Staple shrugged his heavy shoulders. “You’ve got a bee in your bonnet, lad—but I’ll not argue with you. One day the land will be yours—and then we’ll see. If you come back this way, remember you’ll always be welcome at Lonsghyll. As long as I live you’ll find me glad to see you.”

  “And what would my father say, if he learnt I was staying with you, John Staple?”

  “That’s between him and me, lad. One thing I’ve never been afraid of, and that’s speaking my mind to him. I told him, years ago, that he was doing wrong when he quarrelled with you for marrying Mary Ashthwaite, and that, like as not, he’d rue it one day. Mayhap he has rued it. He’s got Marion—she’s never married. Then there’s Charles—his wife died and he’s no children. Malcolm—well, I doubt if he’ll ever rear a family. No children about the place. A pity. Aye. He made a mistake.”

  “Perhaps: perhaps not.” Richard Garth stared out across the river valley, his face furrowed in thought. “Don’t you think we’re all given to over-estimating our own importance?” he inquired. “We, as individuals, matter so little. All this—the land, the river, the hills—these endure, but we pass on. Our family—how I had it dinned into me when I was a kid, the importance of the Garths. A Garth does this, and a Garth does that. All damned rubbish and pretence. We’re an old family—too old. We’ve outlived our usefulness, and it’s time we were finished, time we gave place to something more in tune with the needs of the day. In that sense it may be a good thing that there isn’t a rising generation to carry on the Garth tradition. As I remember it, the tradition was made up of outworn tyrannies.”

  “Maybe you’re right, maybe you’re wrong,” replied Staple. “For my part I find it hard to think of Garthmere without one of the Garths living there—and bec
ause a thing is old, it’s not of necessity bad, any more than it’s good because it’s new. One day I’ll hope to see you living at the Hall, Richard—aye, and your children with you.”

  “You’re a dyed-in-the-wool traditionalist, John,” laughed the other. “I’m glad I met you. It wouldn’t have seemed right to have walked over these fells without seeing you. Now I’ll push on—I must hurry if I’m to get to the Wheatsheaf before dusk, and next time I happen along here I’ll come and stay with you and we’ll talk things out. You’ll have to make some allowances for me, though. A man can’t live for twenty-five years in a new world and come back unchanged.”

  A moment later Richard Garth was striding away eastwards, his face set towards the great limestone mass of Ingleborough which closed in the valley to the east, and John Staple walked on slowly westwards looking for the ewes pasturing on the fell side. His mind was not on the business of his flocks. He was thinking of Richard Garth, and the family at Garthmere Hall, and he felt heavy-hearted. John Staple was essentially loyal, and despite the fact that he admitted that old Mr. Garth was a hard man and a stubborn man, a man moreover who set his face against reform and change, yet Staple was deeply devoted to him. It was true, as Richard Garth had said, that Staple was a traditionalist: the bailiff wanted to see a Garth living at the Hall, carrying on the traditions of landowner and farmer. He had often hoped that Richard would come home one day and enter into the heritage which should be his.

  It was not until the sheep dog started rounding up the sheep and came to ask his master for instructions as clearly as a dog could that Staple brought his mind back to the business in hand. “I don’t know. I don’t know,” he said to himself, as he whistled to the dog, directing him to round up the sheep in the sheltered corner of the stone wall.

  A few minutes after Richard Garth and John Staple had gone their separate ways, another figure rose from behind the wall where they had stood. A tall lanky lad with a fine head and untidy dark hair stood and looked out over Lunesdale.

  “So that was Richard,” he said. “I often wondered what he was like.”

  Chapter Two

  Garthmere Hall stood on the hillside a few hundred yards above the River Lune, the parkland and pastures sloping down to the river and the village. The latter was situated just above the river pastures, a tiny cluster of houses half hidden by trees. The Hall was mediaeval in origin, but succeeding generations had altered it again and again. It was in part great house, in part farm house. Most of the mullioned windows dated from early Jacobean times, as did the great hall with its minstrels’ gallery, but a new wing had been built in Queen Anne’s reign, with fine large rooms facing the southern sun, and more window space than in the earlier parts of the building. It was in this south wing that the Garth family lived, leaving the gloomy mediaeval main block, with its complexity of small rooms and passages, to the rats and mice and bats which had claimed it for their own.

  It was in the “parlour” that the Garths assembled for a meal which was described as tea, though its time varied from five o’clock to seven, and its fare was more substantial than that of many an urban dining table. The parlour was a lofty room of Queen Anne period, its walls covered with the wide panelling of that date, its open fireplace having a richly ornate overmantel of carven stone in which the heraldic bearings of mediaevalism were involved with elaborate decoration of late Renaissance tradition. Malcolm Garth described it as a nightmare in stone, but most of the Garths took it for granted as an essential part of the house, concerning which criticism simply did not arise. The room had long windows facing south, and a french window gave access to what had been a formal garden in other days. It now boasted a fine crop of onions. The furniture of the parlour was a medley of styles and periods, consistent only in the sense that every chair and table and piece was of good craftsmanship and beautiful wood. The long oak table and chairs were such as would be found in many a Lancashire farm house; there were oak dower chests of sixteenth century origin, and a huge Jacobean sideboard, richly carved. There were roomy armchairs with tall backs and winged side pieces, their tapestry covers faded to a pale monochrome which harmonised well with the worn oak floor and walls, and one or two rosewood bookcases of Chippendale design were filled with ancient leather-backed books seen through gold trellised glass-panelled doors.

  On that sunny September afternoon when Richard Garth had met John Staple on the fell side, the Garths met for tea at five o’clock, and sat round the long oak table. They were a curious party—a medley, like the furniture of the room, but they also had a character in common—they had all been working on the land, and they had come in from the fields in their working clothes. Old Robert Garth sat at the head of the table, grim, silent, a grand figure of an old man with his still massive shoulders, shaggy white head, great beaked nose, and deep-set smouldering blue eyes. Opposite him, at the farther end, was his daughter Marion, with a huge teapot of Georgian silver before her. Marion was forty-five, a tall, broad-shouldered, deep-chested woman, her white hair cropped short, and brushed back hard from her sunburnt forehead. She wore a short-sleeved shirt and whipcord breeches, in defiance of her father’s outspoken disgust with such a costume. Marion looked what she was—a hard-working farmer, but neither cropped hair, roughened hands, nor a “stable boy’s livery”—to quote her father—robbed her of a dignity and poise which were ingrained, and had the same ineffaceable quality as the beauty of the worn wood on which her elbows rested. To her right sat a young woman in Land Army uniform—Elizabeth Meldon. She was distantly related to the Garths, and Marion had asked her to come to work at Garthmere during the war. The Squire had expressed both derision and disgust at the idea of having a girl to do farm labourer’s work, but he had found little reason to complain of Elizabeth’s ability: she could milk the cows, “muck-out” the shippon, drive a tractor, and work in the fields with skill and endurance. Tall and slim, her fair hair curled in the modern manner, Elizabeth looked an anachronism in that old room among the silent Garth family. She was defiantly modern, and beautiful at that, and her freshness made a striking contrast to Marion’s worn, stubborn, unyielding dignity. Opposite Elizabeth sat Charles Garth, he who had recently returned from Malaya, a big, gaunt, sun-dried fellow, whose grey hair was receding on the temples, his face furrowed with heavy lines.

  The sun streamed in through the wide windows, its beams dancing on the heavy silver tea set, showing even more plainly that it was sadly in need of polishing. The china was a medley which included some valuable plates, a few cups of Crown Derby, two of them without handles, the remainder of the china being the hideous white “utility” stuff of wartime manufacture. There was a ham in front of the Squire, boiled eggs, home-made butter and jam, tomatoes and salad, and bowls of ripe pears and plums. Elizabeth Meldon was peeling a pear, and Marion replenishing her tea cup when another person came in and joined the party by way of the french window. This was Malcolm, the son of Robert Garth’s second marriage. He was a tall, slim lad who walked with a limp: in contrast to the tanned skins of the others, Malcolm’s face had the rather sallow pale skin which never tans. His eyes were dark, set under whimsical tilted black brows, and a lock of dark hair fell untidily over his forehead. He was dressed in grey flannel trousers, old and baggy, and a blue shirt open at the neck, with rolled-up sleeves, showing his long, thin arms. He went and pulled up a chair next to Elizabeth, who smiled at him with understanding friendly grey eyes. The Squire pushed back his chair and scowled as he enquired,

  “And where have you been wasting your time when everyone else has been working?”

  Malcolm’s face gave a slight twitch, but he replied with cool imperturbability, “In a place and manner of no interest to anybody else.”

  The Squire snorted. “God knows how I came by such a mannerless whelp,” he grunted, and he pushed his chair back noisily and got up and stamped across to the door, walking heavily and banging the door to behind him.

  “For these and
all his other mercies…” murmured Malcolm, as he reached out his hand for a tomato, and Elizabeth inquired,

  “How are the bees?”

  “Oh, not too bad: there’s lashings of honey for them to get, but it’s too windy up there. Bees don’t like wind.”

  Marion poured out another cup of tea and passed it across to Malcolm. “Oh, did you go along the river?” she asked him. “Has John Staple carted that last field of oats yet? He’d still got some uncarted yesterday—in the freshly-ploughed bit by the long holm.”

  “I didn’t notice,” replied Malcolm, and Elizabeth laughed.

  “Don’t you ever notice anything when you’re out?” she inquired. “Staple has still got about three acres uncarted. It ought to be dry now, after this good wind to-day.”

  Marion looked across at her thoughtfully. “Yes. It’d be dry now—and the glass is falling. It is going to rain again, soon. What about lending Staple a hand this evening? The moon’s nearly full, and if four of us went we could help him to get it in in a few hours.”

  Charles Garth groaned aloud. “Damn all, Marion, haven’t we sweated enough this harvest? It was bad enough getting our own crops in, without doing a boy scout touch helping other people—and there’ll be all those blasted potatoes and swedes to be lifted soon.”

  Before Marion had time to reply, Elizabeth cut in: “John Staple helped us with our hay crop,” she said. “If he hadn’t it would still be soaking in the dales. Of course we’ll turn out and help him this evening. I’ll take the lorry and Malcolm can take Jessie and the cart.” (Jessie was a stout old mare.)

  “Good,” said Marion. “I’ll ring Staple up and ask him if he’d like a hand. He’d never ask for help, but he won’t refuse it, if we offer neighbour-like, so to speak. I’m sure Father will come—even though Charles is too tired.”