Head of a Traveller

by Nicholas Blake

  An owl hooted rudely from a tree at the roadside.

  ‘You disagree?’ Nigel addressed the unseen sceptic. ‘You’re telling me that Robert Seaton’s genius is the one thing at Plash Meadow which can safely be left to look after itself? Maybe. But there’s one little commodity genius cannot manufacture for it itself, or do without. Time.’

  ‘Hoo! Hoo! Hoo! Hoo!’ exclaimed the owl.

  ‘Ah, who indeed? Well, tomorrow I shall unwrap the first layer of the mystery . . .’

  At eleven-thirty the following morning, Nigel went into Janet Seaton’s sitting-room. The house was silent. Robert had been distrait at breakfast, and retired to his room immediately afterwards, an intent look upon his face as though his powers were all concentrated on the delicate, invisible thread of poetry to be drawn, unbroken, out of the inner darkness where he had laid it down the day before. Lionel and Vanessa had gone off to the river. In the little garden close beside the old barn, Mara Torrance was sun-bathing: her father, sprawled in a deck chair, read the newspapers.

  ‘May I have a talk with you?’ asked Nigel.

  Mrs Seaton looked up from her accounts. ‘Of course. I was rather hoping—I feel I owe you an apology. Have they heard anything about Finny yet?’

  ‘I’m afraid not.’

  ‘I can’t understand it. He’s never stayed away so long before. Mr Seaton and I are getting anxious about it. I didn’t like to say anything at breakfast, in front of Vanessa.’

  Nigel was struck, not for the first time, by the incongruity between Mrs Seaton’s appearance and her manner. It was as though a hard-bitten hunting-woman spoke in the ceremonious periods of a Jane Austen dowager.

  ‘I’m afraid I rather lost my head the other night,’ she pursued.

  Lost yours and found another’s, thought Nigel. He said:

  ‘It’s I who should apologise. I must have startled you badly, coming out of the darkness like that. I’ve a regrettable tendency towards melodrama, and have never quite succeeded in breaking myself of it.’

  Janet Seaton made an abrupt gesture with her knuckled hands, as if to push aside such a flippancy.

  ‘You knew the—the other head was there, up in the tree?’ she asked.

  ‘It must have seemed as if I was spying on you. But I happened to see Finny start across the courtyard. I was looking out of the window—’

  ‘Looking out? But your window’s—’

  ‘Not out of my window. When the storm began, I went into the room opposite—the room where you generally put guests, Vanessa told me—because the storm was approaching from that side of the house, and I wanted to watch it.’

  From beneath her heavy eyebrows, knitted in a frown, Janet Seaton gave him a somewhat formidable look.

  ‘You haven’t answered my question yet, Mr Strangeways.’

  ‘Well, I did suspect the other head might be up there, yes.’ Nigel paused, his pale-blue eyes fixed inquiringly upon her. ‘So did you, I fancy?’

  ‘I? Really, Mr Strangeways!’

  ‘In fact, you as good as told me so. Not intentionally, of course.’

  The painful flush came over Janet Seaton’s face, darkening its sallow skin. She rose abruptly from her desk, went over to the window-seat and plumped herself down on it, face averted.

  ‘I think you had better explain yourself.’

  ‘Do you mind if I smoke? . . . It began with the clay head of your husband. I was told that you had provoked Mara Torrance into doing it.’

  ‘You were told? By whom?’

  ‘I gathered it was so,’ Nigel went on patiently, scrutinising the stiff, bulky figure outlined against the window. ‘I gathered that you had thrown doubts on Mara’s ability to do a straightforward, realistic portrait-head. You made a violent attack upon the abstract, non-representational school. So her father told me, at any rate. Yet, at tea the other day, you showed considerable knowledge of this school, and sympathy for it. Naturally this suggested to me that your previous attack on it had not been quite ingenuous. Just a minute,’ said Nigel as Mrs Seaton made an impatient movement, ‘let me go on. I’m simply explaining how I reasoned. If you had no arrière-pensée, if you just wanted Mara to do a head of your husband, it was surely a roundabout way to get it. Why not have asked her straight out? And then this clay head, obtained in a rather devious manner, is exhibited on the tea-table, in full view of Finny Black, on a thundery afternoon when he is already showing the signs of mild dementia which such weather brings on him.’

  Janet Seaton’s heavy head made a little, weaving movement from side to side, like that of a fly-tormented heifer. Nigel felt a stir of pity for her: but his curiosity was stronger, and he went on:

  ‘It occurred to me that the whole thing might be a contrivance on your part to get Finny to lead you to the head of the murdered man. You suspected, at any rate, that he might have hidden it. And, if he had done so on the night of the murder, he might repeat the action again with the—with a make-believe head.’

  ‘I think I know what you’re going to ask me,’ came in a numb voice from the woman at the window. A crucial question was indeed on the tip of Nigel’s tongue: but he decided not to put it yet. Instead, he asked:

  ‘Wasn’t that what you had in mind? And the reason why I was not put in the usual guest-room?’

  ‘You’re very intelligent, Mr Strangeways.’ Janet Seaton turned to him. She was unable to conceal a look of relief, of reprieve almost. Her fingers unlocked themselves on her lap. ‘You’re quite a dangerous guest to have in the house, you know,’ she added with an attempt at archness.

  ‘So there we were,’ Nigel pursued. ‘A thundery night. The decoy head in position, so to speak. Finny getting worked up. The dangerous guest tucked safely away on the other side of the house—and, by the way, I couldn’t help noticing that you were on edge that evening, and relieved when I went up to bed. Yes, I have to confess that I didn’t go into the other room just to watch the storm. Presently you came out and stood at the door giving on to the courtyard. And then Finny, who’d presumably fetched the clay head from your husband’s study and taken it to his bedroom, emerged from the servants’ quarters. You were on the watch, and followed him out to the chestnut tree. And I followed you. A shocking abuse of hospitality, I fear.’

  Janet Seaton smiled at him uncertainly. ‘And I lost my head, and as good as got you strangled by poor Finny. A shocking abuse of my position as your hostess. May I have one of your cigarettes?’

  ‘Oh, I’m so sorry.’ Nigel lit it for her, noticing how her hands still trembled. ‘Did you suspect Finny had done the murder? Or did you think he’d just come upon the severed head by accident, and hidden it?’

  There was a marked pause before Janet Seaton spoke. ‘I’d no idea, one way or the other. There was no evidence then, you remember, that the—that it had been done here at all. Or who the victim was,’ she said slowly. ‘All I knew was that the head had disappeared; and that Finny is apt to take things, and to behave rather strangely during thunderstorms. Somehow the two things got linked together in my mind. So I made the experiment.’

  ‘I see. Did your husband know what you were up to?’

  A momentary look of hauteur came into Mrs Seaton’s face, induced no doubt by Nigel’s rather disrespectful mode of referring to her ‘experiment.’

  ‘He knew what was in my mind.’

  ‘And approved what you were doing?’

  ‘But of course.’ Her rising intonation suggested that she was not accustomed to solicit Robert’s approval for her conduct. The Lacey blood was very much in the ascendant again.

  ‘What I can’t understand,’ remarked Nigel mildly, ‘is why you went to such extraordinary lengths to protect Finny Black.’

  ‘To protect Finny?’

  ‘Yes. The whole procedure, from the provenance of the clay head onwards, was so much under cover. If you’d merely thought Finny might have had some connection with the murder, with the missing head, why not have suggested that experiment to the police, or
to me?’

  ‘But I had no proof.’ Mrs Seaton sounded a bit flustered. Then she recovered herself and said in her stateliest manner, ‘It is surely quite natural to look after the interests of one’s dependants. We Laceys have always prided ourselves on—’

  ‘Oh, come, Mrs Seaton, that really won’t do at all,’ exclaimed Nigel, who could be formidable too on occasion. ‘You are a woman of very considerable intellectual powers. You couldn’t have failed to realise what construction the police would place upon your behaviour.’

  ‘My behaviour? I don’t understand you,’ she said icily.

  ‘Your keeping it all so dark. Let me tell you, then, what the police will say. They’ll say that it was quite inconceivable for you to have done all this in the interests of a dependant—and a half-wit dwarf at that.’ Janet Seaton visibly flinched. ‘They’ll say that your actions can only be interpreted in one way,’ Nigel went on, ‘and that your secrecy can only be accounted for in one way. You, or someone you love, killed Oswald Seaton. The head was removed to prevent identification of the victim. Finny Black stole the head and hid it, in the temporary absence of the murderer, perhaps while he was putting the body into the river. You, or the murderer, know that there’s no safety until the head is disposed of. You suspect Finny may have got it. You dare not ask him openly to produce it for you, because that might give you away. So you work out an elaborate and furtive method by which Finny may lead you to the head without himself or any one else knowing what’s afoot. Would any one lay herself open to such obvious and appalling suspicions, the police will ask, on behalf of a—’

  ‘Stop!’ Janet Seaton almost shrieked it. Her fingers writhed and clenched in her lap as she fought for command of herself. Her face was turned away again. Presently she said:

  ‘Have you ever wondered why Robert and I had no children of our own?’

  Nigel shook his head uncomprehendingly. Janet Seaton’s eyes glanced all round her exquisite room, as if seeking strength or comfort in its familiar beauties, or as if seeing them now for the first time, or the last—the highlights on the rosewood and walnut furniture, the hand-painted Bristol glass bowls on the mantelshelf, the little Constable glowing like a gem above it—all the symbols and supports of an elegant, rich, distinguished life.

  ‘You say one would only have done—done what I did—the secrecy, the—the calculation of it all—for somebody one loves?’

  Nigel nodded.

  ‘You wonder why I should do so much to protect poor Finny?’

  Nigel nodded again. He could hardly have spoken a word, so breathless had the atmosphere become in the square, shining room. Janet Seaton’s voice was a harsh whisper.

  ‘Finny is my child,’ she said.

  Chapter 8

  Rennell Torrance Reveals

  ‘MRS SEATON’S CHILD! Oh, well now. Extraordinary! Could you believe it! Inexperienced girl, no doubt. Unfortunate lapse. Best regulated families. Most disconcerting. Oh, well now, what next, I wonder?’

  Superintendent Blount, as was his way when events sprang a surprise upon him, fell into the idiom of Mr Jingle, and repeatedly patted the dome of his bald head.

  Nigel, who felt a dim atavistic unease at discussing the case with Blount under his host’s roof, had compromised with the summerhouse. They were sitting there in the deck chairs, facing the garden and the old barn.

  ‘I’ll leave you to elicit the details from Mrs Seaton,’ said Nigel.

  The Superintendent looked unhappier still. ‘I suppose I shall have to. Vairy distasteful. Oh, dear me,’ he complained, unprofessionally. ‘And it doesn’t help us at all. Unless the puir wee dwarf did it. I suppose she’s afraid he did? Is that all she told you about—e-eh—her relationship to him?’

  Janet Seaton, in a stony, broken voice, had gone on to tell Nigel that Finny’s father was a cousin of hers, later killed in the first World War. She had been seduced by him at the age of eighteen. She had gone down to a lonely cottage outside a village in Dorset, where she was unknown to any one but her old nurse, who lived there. When the child was born and its abnormalities became painfully clear, she left it in the nurse’s charge. The nurse herself had died ten years ago; and Robert Seaton, to whom she had confessed the episode before their marriage, said they must look after Finny. During their honeymoon, spent in a village some distance away, Robert had gone over, Janet not daring to show herself, and found Finny in a bad way, living from hand to mouth, persecuted by the village hobbledehoys. They had brought him back to Plash Meadow.

  ‘So you understand why Robert—why I dared not have any children again,’ Janet had ended.

  Nigel now passed on this information to Blount, who presently commented:

  ‘I doubt it’s strange she should take him back after all that time, and get fond of him. You’d think it was the last thing a proud woman like her could bear—having him about the house.’

  ‘It was Robert’s doing, chiefly, I presume. If it’s true. With the two chief witnesses dead, you’ll find it difficult to corroborate her story.’

  ‘But why should she make up such a humiliating story? Unless, of course—’

  ‘Exactly,’ said Nigel. A shrewd look was exchanged between them.

  ‘Well, we’ve found the head now. What about the clothes? Have your people checked up on the luggage Lionel Seaton took away that weekend?’ Nigel asked.

  ‘He left here with one large suitcase. The gardener, who drove him to the station, confirms that. And he arrived with one large suitcase.’

  ‘Very helpful,’ said Nigel.

  ‘I’ve been thinking about those clothes. Look here, Strangeways, supposing you’ve got a bloodstained suit on your hands, pair of boots, underwear, all the doings. And suppose you’re too fly to bury them or put them in the river, or try and burn them, or send them to a cleaner’s, what’d you do?’

  Nigel gave the subject his attention for a minute. ‘Wrap ’em all up in a parcel and post them off to some total stranger,’ he answered.

  ‘Too risky. Chances are the recipient of a bloodstained suit would take it to the police, and then there’d be the postmark to give you away.’

  ‘Post it from somewhere else, then.’

  ‘But none of the family except Lionel Seaton has left the neighbourhood since the murder.’

  ‘Well, Lionel had a big suitcase, you say. And for a short weekend, too.’

  ‘That’s true enough. But the recipient would still take them to the police. Or would he?’ Blount paused expectantly in the manner of a schoolmaster prompting a brilliant pupil.

  ‘I see what you’re hinting at. A recipient who needed clothes so badly that he’d not make a fuss about a few bloodstains.’

  ‘Capital, capital!’ The Superintendent, vigorously massaging his head, beamed upon Nigel.

  ‘A displaced person. Someone abroad. A German.’

  ‘Lionel Seaton was in the Army of Occupation in Germany for a short while.’

  ‘So he might have addressed the parcel to someone he knew out there?’

  ‘Or handed it to one of the Relief Organisations. We’ve started inquiries on those lines. No results yet.’

  ‘If that turns out to be the explanation, Lionel is the murderer; or else he got rid of a parcel, in all good faith, handed to him by someone else. But you know, there’s a simpler solution,’ said Nigel slowly.

  The Superintendent cocked his head. ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Finny found a heap of clothes where he found the head, and took them off to another of his hiding-places.’

  ‘I got Robert Seaton to take me round to all the old caches he knew of. We drew a blank.’

  ‘Damn it, Blount, you seem to think of everything. Still, it’s not decisive. Finny might have made a new cache.’

  ‘That’s what worries me. I wish we could find him. It’d no’ be healthy for him, wandering about with that secret in his head.’

  ‘Surely you needn’t worry now. The clothes were disposed of, presumably, because they’d
give a clue to the victim’s identity: otherwise they’d have been deposited in the river with the body, or never taken off it. But once the head was found, there’d be no point in the murderer’s killing Finny to keep the secret of the clothes.’

  ‘But the best part of a night elapsed between Finny’s disappearance and the discovery of Oswald Seaton’s head. And Robert Seaton and his son were out hunting for Finny some of that time. They started out together: then they parted company, Robert going over the grounds and the meadow out yonder, Lionel along the river bank. That’s their story, anyway. Hallo! There’s Dolores looking for me.’

  The bearer of this exotic name was the village girl who came every morning to clean the house. Blount had evidently established good relations with her.

  ‘Well, Dolores my lassie, so you can’t keep away from me!’ he exclaimed as the slatternly creature approached the summerhouse.

  ‘Saucy! You’re wanted on the telephone. Or shall I bring it out for you?’

  The Superintendent lumbered off towards the house, exchanging elephantine badinage with Dolores. Nigel lay back in the deck-chair and closed his eyes. His mind played around the interview with Janet Seaton this morning; the confession which had told so much and explained so little. He kept recurring to the crucial question—the question which, as it happened, he had never asked her.

  ‘That was Gates,’ said the Superintendent when he returned. ‘He’s found a witness at last who saw Oswald Seaton the night he was murdered. Farm labourer. Lives in a cottage about a mile out from Chillingham. Been on the booze, fell into a ditch and decided to stay there till he’d sobered up, his wife being a bit of a termagant. Incidentally, that’s why he’s not come forward till now—wife told him to have nothing to do with the police. Anyway, he saw a chap walking fast away from Chillingham. Shortish mackintosh, no hat, same height and general description as Oswald Seaton. Not much doubt it was he. Farm labourer didn’t hail him. Surly chap. Looked at watch, though. Time was eleven-fifteen. So we can take it as fairly certain our man arrived on the ten fifty-eight from Bristol. Which narrows down our search to Bristol and a few intermediate towns where that express stops.’