Head of a Traveller

by Nicholas Blake

  ‘Oh well now, oh well now,’ said Blount, patting his bald head.

  ‘So run back to the house and get your album, Vanessa.’

  The girl galloped off. Nigel quickly told Blount the information he had received from Jack Whitford, adjuring him not to make any trouble with the poacher for having withheld it from Inspector Gates: there might be more information to come from that quarter.

  ‘Aye. It gives us a line. I’m much obliged to you, Strangeways. We’ll take it up at the Chillingham end, too. The Thursday night. In Foxhole wood, shortly before midnight, this chap was seen, eh?’

  ‘And it takes about quarter of an hour’s brisk walking from the wired gate to Ferry Lacey. You know about the right-of-way, I presume, and how it forks.’

  ‘Uh-huh. Any more gossip?’

  ‘Plenty. It’ll keep for a bit. Can you come along to Paul Willingham’s farm, at Hinton Lacey—say nine o’clock this evening? We’ll have a chat.’

  ‘Very well. By the by, your deserter theory won’t do. Gates got in touch with the Service authorities. As far as we can tell, no lads from this village are on their list of deserters.’

  ‘Oh, that’s cold rice now. What you’ve got to find is somebody who knew this part of the country very well, but left it for good nine or ten years ago.’

  Blount raised his eyebrows interrogatively. A tremor of the earth’s surface announced the return, at full speed, of Miss Vanessa Seaton.

  ‘I’ll explain this evening,’ said Nigel hurriedly. ‘Now, out with your pen and sign, please.’

  As they walked back to Plash Meadow, Vanessa told Nigel that her stepmother would like to see him privately before lunch. She took him to a small sitting-room, where they found Mrs Seaton doing her accounts. She rose and received him graciously.

  ‘Do sit down, won’t you? All right, Vanessa, run along now . . . Mr Strangeways, I wanted a word with you. Vanessa tells me this Superintendent Blount is a friend of yours. Perhaps you could advise me. You see, he has asked if I—if we have any objection to the police searching this house. Naturally, I asked him if he had a search-warrant. He hadn’t, of course. And I must say it seems to me quite preposterous—I mean, it was bad enough having that fool of an Inspector Gates badgering us all. And I gave the police a free hand to search the grounds and out-buildings, several days ago. But the house! Well, really!’

  ‘Blount cannot very well proceed without a warrant. But it’s every one’s duty to assist the police to the best of—’

  ‘I consider it my chief duty, Mr Strangeways, to protect my husband from worry and interference,’ said Janet Seaton, grandly. ‘His work must always come first with me. I think it quite monstrous that, because some unfortunate person gets killed—nowhere near my house, incidentally—Robert should be pestered. And just when his new poem has reached a point that demands the greatest concentration.’

  ‘Yes. I see that. But I’m sure the search could be managed so that your husband wasn’t disturbed.’

  ‘It’s not only that. It’s the indignity of it all—a pack of policemen ransacking one’s home! I have some very valuable things here, as you know. Irreplaceable things. If they were damaged—’

  ‘I don’t think there’s any likelihood of that. Scotland Yard men are extremely skilled and careful.’

  ‘But I can’t see the necessity for it.’

  ‘It’s just to make sure that this man who was murdered didn’t come here. He might have been a burglar and tried to break in, for instance. Or a fugitive from justice.’

  ‘But, good gracious me, if he’d broken in, if he’d left clues here, we should have found them.’

  ‘On Friday morning, you mean?’

  ‘Yes. If that was the morning after—after it happened. I didn’t know the police had fixed it so definitely.’

  Nigel seemed to detect a certain unwonted flurry in Mrs Seaton’s rhythm at this point—a check, a recovery, a rush in her words, like the gait on a hurdler who has just touched the top bar with his foot, but recovered himself well enough to make up the lost ground. She went on:

  ‘I’ll think over what you say. Well, we mustn’t keep the Poet waiting any longer. He’s expecting you.’

  It’s either pure innocence or a phenomenal effort of willpower, thought Nigel as they went upstairs, that she should refrain from sounding me further about the Thursday night.

  Robert Seaton was sitting at a small table in the far corner of his study. The window overlooked the courtyard, the out-buildings, and the rolling pastoral country beyond: but the table was set so that his back was turned to the window when writing. There were bookshelves lining three of the walls. On one of them stood a bronze bust of the poet, by Epstein. The room was light, fresh and tidy-looking; but somewhat austere, compared with the elaborate richness and artistry of the downstairs rooms: no pictures, no valuable bric-à-brac.

  ‘I’ve got ’em all for you,’ said Robert Seaton cheerfully. ‘You must thank my wife for that. No idea they hadn’t been thrown away. But she’d kept ’em all under lock and key.’

  He pointed to a pile of five or six small notebooks on the table.

  ‘Robert is too modest,’ said Mrs Seaton. ‘I knew they would be of interest to posterity.’

  ‘Posterity? Poof! That’s a very big word. I’m sure Strangeways doesn’t want to be called posterity.’

  ‘You know what I mean, Robert.’ Mrs Seaton sounded rather piqued. Nigel seemed to sense a change in Robert Seaton. He was brisker, more alive than in June, as though something had been released in him. The air after a thunderstorm, thought Nigel: damn it, I’ve got thunder on the brain!

  ‘Now here,’ the poet was saying. ‘What’s this? Oh, yes, Lyrical Interludes.’ He had taken up the top notebook from the pile. ‘Mmm. I had nothing to say in those days, but I said it rather well. You’ll find it quite easy to follow. I’ve always done my first drafts in pencil—afraid they’re almost illegible.’ Looking over his shoulder, Nigel saw the page scored all over with corrections and alternatives. Robert Seaton turned over. ‘Then the subsequent drafts of each poem are in ink. You’ll see how they worked out. Quite simple. Well, here you are, then.’

  He laid the pile of notebooks in Nigel’s hands.

  ‘Oh, Robert, do you think you’d better?—I mean, I’m sure Mr Strangeways would be very careful of them. But—’

  ‘Nonsense my dear! If he’s to work on them, he must take them along.’

  ‘I was just thinking, wouldn’t it be simpler if he stayed with us at Plash Meadow while—we should be delighted to have you, Mr Strangeways, if Paul could spare you for a few days.’

  ‘Excellent idea,’ said Robert Seaton, rubbing his hands briskly. ‘Why not? Of course you will, my dear fellow.’ An impish gleam came into his eyes. ‘You’ll be able to divide your time between your work and your hobby. You’ve heard about our local crime, I suppose?’

  ‘I have, indeed.’

  ‘Splendid! Capital! That’s fixed, then. When can you come? Tomorrow? The sooner, the better. Take some of the garrison duty off Janet’s shoulders.’

  ‘Robert! Really! I’m sure Mr Strangeways doesn’t—’

  ‘My wife has the most exaggerated ideas about the sacrosanctity of my work. I really believe she’d allow police into this room only over her dead body.’

  ‘Mrs Seaton was telling me you’ve reached a critical point in your new long poem.’

  ‘Long poem? Oh yes. To be sure. I—’

  ‘Robert doesn’t like talking about a poem he’s actually at work on,’ Janet put in firmly.

  ‘No. I quite understand,’ said Nigel.

  ‘Well, I’m moving ahead, anyway. Janet gave me this pen a few weeks ago. Called a Stylograph. Ever seen one? It must have brought me luck. Scribble, scribble, scribble. But I suppose even it will dry up one day.’

  ‘You can get it refilled at Axters’. Shall we go down to lunch?’

  At lunch, Nigel brought the conversation round to the great thunderstorm of last week.
He was aware at once of tactful efforts by Mrs Seaton to change the subject; but Vanessa, with an air of unassuaged grievance, persisted that she had not been dreaming.

  ‘I saw you both crossing the court,’ she said to her parents. ‘Honestly I did. And it was after the thunder-shower, because the grass was gleaming wet. I looked at my watch and it said five to one. I couldn’t have dreamed about looking at my watch. It’d have changed into a turnip or an ice-cream or something, if I’d been dreaming.’

  ‘Vanessa, we’ve been into all this.’ Mrs Seaton turned to Nigel. ‘We all had a very disturbed night. I went out soon after the first thunderstorm began, to see if Kitty—that’s the mare—was frightened: she’s very timid. Vanessa must have seen us then, and got it mixed up with a dream.’

  ‘But I tell you it wasn’t then! I—’

  ‘You mustn’t contradict your mother,’ said Robert Seaton gently. ‘Anyway, what does it matter?’

  ‘My veracity is being impugnated,’ Vanessa exclaimed, with a virgin-and-martyr air which made Lionel Seaton chuckle.

  ‘Impugned, fatty. Impugned,’ he said. ‘Either impugned or impregnated. You can’t have it both ways.’

  ‘I shall say “impugnated” if I wish,’ returned his sister, with great dignity. ‘It’s a perfectly good word. And don’t call me “fatty!” You should have more respect for womanhood.’

  The rest of lunch conducted itself quite amiably, with a great deal of family jokes and jargon bandied about. Finny Black, chuckling and gurgling at the sallies of laughter from the two young people, waited upon them deftly. Nigel thought to himself that the Seaton ménage was taking its local crime very much in its stride.

  As it turned out, however, he was not quite right about this. After lunch, when Lionel and Vanessa had gone off together, Mrs Seaton took up the subject of Vanessa’s ‘dream’ again.

  ‘We thought it best to tell her she’d imagined it all. But the fact is, she did see Robert and myself that night. I’d better explain’—she glanced at her husband—‘since Mr Strangeways has hinted that the Thursday night may be important.’

  She went on to say that Finny Black was apt to be overexcited by thunderstorms. It had happened several times before: he’d been found wandering about the house or grounds in a rather demented state (‘like a child—an oversensitive child’). They had gone to his bedroom, to make sure he was all right. The room was empty. So they went out of doors, and looked about the grounds for him, calling his name softly so as not to alarm him further.

  ‘And did you in fact find him?’ Nigel interposed.

  ‘Not then. He turned up about an hour later, drenched to the skin,’ said Robert.

  Mrs Seaton, lowering her voice confidentially, said: ‘You see, Vanessa is highly-strung. And she’s never quite taken to Finny. That’s why we took the line we did. It would have been most unwise to let her know that Finny may sometimes be wandering about the place, in the dark.’

  Nigel thought privately that it was still more unwise not to have warned Vanessa about the possibility of a demented and gibbering dwarf bumping into her room one night. However, it was not his concern. He meditated for a moment asking them why they kept Finny Black on, if Vanessa didn’t like him. But what he finally said was:

  ‘Yes, I see. That explains it. Tell me, Mrs Seaton, you and your people have been associated so long with this village, I expect you know the history of every family in it: tell me, do you remember any one leaving the village, perhaps under a cloud, nine or ten years ago? A man of forty-five or fifty? One who had lived here all his life till then, or at any rate was thoroughly familiar with the surrounding countryside.’

  As he amplified his question, Nigel was quite appalled by its effect upon his host and hostess. Janet Seaton’s sallow face darkened with a painful flush, and her big-knuckled hands clenched on the arms of her chair. Robert Seaton took his pipe out of his mouth, positively gaping at Nigel.

  There was a stricken, dead silence when he stopped. Then both of them began to speak together, and both broke off.

  ‘Really, it’s too extraordinary,’ said the poet, at a second attempt. ‘Isn’t it, Janet? I mean, your whole description fits perfectly, Strangeways. But—’

  ‘Fits whom?’

  ‘My elder brother, Oswald.’

  ‘Robert, I don’t think Mr Strangeways is—’

  ‘But it does,’ said the poet, brushing aside his wife’s protest with an impatient gesture. ‘It was ten years ago. And he was—let me see—fifty, no forty-nine then. And he certainly knew this countryside like the back of his hand.’

  ‘But he didn’t leave under a cloud, I’m sure,’ said Nigel. ‘Did he go abroad? Where is he now?’

  ‘Oh, no,’ said Robert Seaton. ‘He didn’t go abroad. He disappeared one day. And—well, the next day I heard that he’d drowned himself, poor chap.’

  Chapter 4

  The Dark Backward

  BEFORE THEY PARTED, it was arranged that Nigel should install himself at Plash Meadow on Monday. That would give him one more full day with Paul. As he strolled across the courtyard to the old barn, he was thinking how satisfactorily things had panned out: he would be able to devote next week to a study of Robert Seaton’s manuscripts, undistracted by misgivings about the Ferry Lacey crime; for, after what the poet had just told him, and particularly the way he had told it, Nigel could not seriously imagine that he had accepted the hospitality of a murderer. It was a pity, of course, that Oswald Seaton had drowned himself ten years before. Theoretically, he would have fitted into the picture very neatly—family black sheep returning, embarrassment all round, blackmail perhaps, off with his head. He could imagine Janet Seaton going to almost any lengths to preserve her status quo. But that idea didn’t have to be reckoned with now, thank goodness.

  Nigel walked round the barn, idly noting that one door opened on to the courtyard, while there were french windows at the end facing the drive which led out into the lane, and on the far side lay a neat little enclosed garden—rose-bushes, a lawn, a few apple trees. Turning back again, after a glance at this garden-plot, he found Mara Torrance opening the french windows. She let him in to the studio. This was a big, high, cool apartment, occupying half the length of the building, its whitewashed walls carrying right up to the arched and timbered roof. The rest of the barn had been divided into two stories: kitchen-dining-room and offices below; above, three small bedrooms and a bathroom. Access to this upper floor, which had originally been the barn loft, was by a steep stair-ladder from the studio: the loft had a balustrade, and from below presented the appearance of a minstrels’ gallery.

  At Nigel’s request, Mara had taken him round the place. She had pointed out its features in a bored, dégagé manner. Nigel had glanced out of her bedroom window, from which she had seen the Seatons crossing the courtyard on the night of the storm: he noted that this bedroom was farthest from the staircase, Rennell Torrance’s nearest to it, and a cell-like spare room in between.

  Now they were back in the studio. While Mara went to prepare coffee, Nigel mooched around, scrutinising the pictures hung low on the walls, the canvases stacked against them. Rennell Torrance was clearly a prolific painter. Evidence of genius was less noticeable, however. The subjects of his canvases were romantic; the treatment ambitious, slovenly, grandiose. He sets himself up to be a ‘visionary’ painter, thought Nigel: but his visions are synthetic—pitiable attempts to inflate a respectable small talent into the proportions of greatness. There was a monotony about the pictures; their general impression on the eye was that of a series of unfinished studies for a masterpiece not yet begun.

  Nigel turned away to a side table littered with dirty glasses, painting materials, old magazines. One of these lay open at a photograph of the Seatons and Torrances grouped against the front of Plash Meadow. It had the usual society paper’s vapid caption:

  Artistic Entente (read Nigel). The distinguished poet, Robert Seaton, poses en famille outside his beautiful old house at Ferry Lacey.
Mrs Seaton was one of the Laceys, from time immemorial lords of the manor in this part of the world. With them are the painter, Rennell Torrance, and his attractive daughter. The Torrances live in an old tithe barn adjoining Plash Meadow, converted for them by Mr and Mrs Seaton into a ravishing atelier (see picture below).

  The magazine was dated July of the previous year. Nigel put it down and approached another table which stood before an artist’s throne. On this table stood a round object concealed by a cloth. Nigel took off the cloth. What he saw made him draw in his breath sharply. It was a head. Moulded in clay. A head, unmistakably, of Robert Seaton. The object made every single canvas in the studio look third-rate; it had an extraordinary power and vitality. But the shocking thing was that the face of the poet had been given an abominable untruth. Every feature was perfectly recognisable, almost photographically correct; yet the whole effect was one of evil—a sultry, gloating kind of evil. It was the face of a devil, basking in his own damnation.

  ‘Crikey,’ murmured Nigel, putting back the cloth.

  ‘How dare you do that!’ came the furious voice of Mara Torrance from the doorway. She slammed down the coffee tray on a table, and thrust herself between Nigel and the clay head, almost as if protecting it. ‘How dare you go prying at my work!’

  ‘So you did it?’

  ‘I hate people looking at my things when they’re unfinished. Sorry to break out like that,’ she said, more equably.

  ‘Unfinished? I see.’

  ‘What d’you mean?’

  ‘Well, I was going to ask if that’s the way you really see Robert Seaton.’

  ‘Oh. Oh, no.’ A bewildered look came into her face. Her voice went weak and faltering. ‘I don’t know how it got like that,’ she said. ‘I—it frightens me. I’d better start again.’

  ‘It’s very good, though. Very good indeed. Terrifyingly good.’

  ‘What’s very good?’ said her father, coming into the room.

  Nigel indicated the head.

  ‘Oh, that. Yes, Mara has inherited some of my gift. It’ll be one in the eye for Janet, anyway.’ Rennell Torrance sniggered fatly, plumped himself down in a chair and poured out a cup of coffee. ‘Well, she asked for it.’