Head of a Traveller

by Nicholas Blake

  The Board of Directors shifted their feet, muttered, avoided one another’s eyes, in the awkward pause that followed. How absurdly guilty they all look, thought Nigel—particularly Robert Seaton, with that angelic expression of innocence, like a dear little choirboy bluffing it out on the Vicar.

  ‘Surely it’s possible that Finny took the key himself and stole the food out of our larder at night,’ suggested Janet Seaton.

  ‘I’m afraid not,’ Blount replied. ‘He’d have left his fingerprints. And there aren’t any. As to the key, now . . . But if no one will volunteer the information, I’ll have to ask Finny himself. Bower, will you—?’

  ‘I will not have Finny bullied,’ said Janet with strong emphasis.

  Blount replied, suavely, ‘You are all here to see that he is not.’

  ‘I think—’ began Robert Seaton. His son interrupted him: lounging back in his chair, eyes on the ceiling, Lionel said coolly:

  ‘Oh, well then. I hid Finny and acted as his supply line.’

  Mara Torrance’s hand flew to her mouth, stifling a cry. Janet knitted her thick brows at her stepson.

  ‘You? But Lionel, why—?’

  ‘I hid Finny and brought him food,’ Lionel repeated more loudly. ‘I—’

  ‘Damn it, Bower, come back! We don’t want him yet,’ Blount exclaimed to his sergeant, who had moved to the door just now, in smart anticipation of his superior’s command, and opened it. Finny Black, a uniformed policeman close by, was sitting outside.

  Blount turned upon Lionel when the door was shut again.

  ‘You realise you were obstructing the police in their duties by what you did?’

  ‘I suppose I was,’ the young man equably replied. ‘I’m sorry. I just wanted to give him a chance.’

  ‘A chance to do what?’ asked Blount, manfully refraining his exasperation.

  ‘Oh, get his second wind, pull himself together. He was scared stiff after what happened that night. I found him quite soon, near the river. I thought he might be going to chuck himself in. So I told him to go to the church and wait for me. Then I came back here. And later that night I slipped out again with some food and the key of the vault. I told him to pop into the vault if any one came along. He thought it was a new sort of game.

  ‘It was an odd hiding-place to think of, Mr Seaton.’

  ‘I suppose it was,’ said Lionel. ‘But poor Finny wouldn’t mind a few Lacey skeletons, you know. And I did hate the idea of him being chivvied all over the countryside by the constabulary.’

  The Superintendent unmasked a battery. ‘Had you not already used the vault as a hiding-place? Wasn’t that why it occurred to you at once as the best place to conceal Finny Black?’

  ‘I don’t get you.’

  ‘Was it not you who put the bloodstained clothes of Oswald Seaton in the vault, where I found them last night?’

  ‘The bloodstained—? Well, I’m jiggered!’

  The whole company rocked visibly at this blow. Rennell Torrance’s eyes bulged. Janet’s hand went to her throat. Robert pursed his lips as if to whistle. Mara was staring desperately at Lionel, who alone seemed, after his first exclamation, to be taking the thing in his stride.

  ‘Now this won’t do at all,’ he said. ‘In the first place, if I’d murdered Oswald, I’d never be so dim-witted as to hide Finny in the very spot where I’d hidden my victim’s clothes. And secondly, if I’d murdered Oswald, I wouldn’t have hidden Finny at all; not alive, anyway. Finny’d be much too dangerous to have about the place. I’d have pushed him into the river—he can’t swim, you know—or locked him up in the vault, dead. Wouldn’t I now?’ The remarkable young man gazed blandly at Blount. ‘I’m assuming,’ he added, ‘that all this fuss about Finny is because you think he knows who murdered Oswald.’

  Nigel had a sudden conviction that this performance was partly for Mara’s benefit. The girl was certainly gazing at Lionel now as if she saw him in a new light. So, for that matter, was Superintendent Blount.

  ‘Very well then,’ he said. ‘I’ll come back to you later. Bring in Finny Black now, Sergeant.’

  The scene, as always happened when the dwarf appeared on the stage, took a grotesque turn. What was it now? A midget being interviewed for a key-post? An oracle being consulted? No, thought Nigel as the uncouth manikin climbed on to a chair beside Superintendent Blount and sat there, his legs sticking out straight in front of him, his square mouth gaping like a box, a patch of red on each cheek—no, this is the ventriloquist’s act. The illusion was increased by the mechanical way in which Finny’s head turned to Blount at every question, and by the bizarre grunts and cluckings that came from his lips.

  ‘Now you understand, Finny, that you must tell us the truth, don’t you?’ Blount was saying. ‘Mr Seaton wants you to tell the truth. Isn’t that so?’

  ‘Yes, Finny must tell the truth,’ said Robert Seaton.

  ‘I’m going to ask you questions,’ Blount went on. ‘You can nod for “yes” and shake your head for “no.” If you don’t know the answer, put up both your hands. If you don’t understand the question, put up one hand. Do you follow me?’

  Finny gurgled, nodding vigorously.

  ‘Good. Now, Finny, you’ve been asked some of these questions before. Never mind that. You know that a man was murdered here?’

  Finny nodded.

  ‘Did you kill him yourself?’

  Finny, gibbering, shook his head so violently that it seemed as if it might fly off his neck.

  ‘Did you see this man, alive, the night of the thunderstorm?’

  Shake.

  ‘Did you find his head and climb up the chestnut tree with it and hide it there?’

  Finny looked puzzled, put his hand over his face with a smearing movement; then tentatively held up the other hand.

  ‘You don’t understand my question?’

  ‘I think he’s confused between the two heads,’ suggested Robert Seaton.

  ‘Ah, yes. Finny, I’m not talking about the clay head, the model one of Mr Seaton, which you took just before you ran away. I’m talking about the real one’—Blount had a grisly inspiration—‘the one with blood on its neck.’

  Finny’s face lit up. He nodded cheerfully.

  ‘You took that head and hid it up the tree?’

  Nod.

  ‘Did you find it—e-eh, in the house somewhere?’

  Shake.

  ‘Out of doors?’

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake!’ Mara Torrance exclaimed, almost whimpering. ‘Must we listen while—it’s like Twenty Questions. I can’t stand—’

  ‘Be quiet, Miss Torrance! Compose yourself!’ said the Superintendent very firmly. ‘Did you find this head, the bloody head, in—e-eh, in the dairy, perhaps?’

  Finny clucked and nodded, bouncing a little in his chair.

  ‘The dairy. Just so. Was the head in a net?’ Blount made a sort of conjurer’s movement, and held a net shopping bag up to Finny. ‘Something like this?’

  The dwarf nodded.

  ‘When you found the head in the dairy—we’ll go out presently and you can show me just exactly where you found it—did you see the man’s body too?’

  Shake.

  ‘You didn’t. Was the light on in the dairy? The electric light?’

  Finny shook his head, but looked troubled. He made a writing movement. Blount at once put paper and pencil before him; and Finny, tongue in cheek, laboriously scrawled a word.

  ‘Oh, I see. “Lantern.” There was a storm-lantern there, already lit?’

  Nod.

  ‘Vairy good, Finny. You’re doing fine. Have you any idea what the time was when you found the head?’

  Finny put up both hands.

  ‘Do you remember, was it raining when you went into the dairy?’

  Finny’s big head rolled on his neck. He began to put up both hands. Then he startled the audience by standing upright on the chair and doing a little pantomime. His eyes winced; a growling sort of bark issued from his throat.
/>
  ‘Lightning and thunder,’ said Lionel Seaton.

  ‘Capital, Finny! Excellent! There was lightning and thunder when you went to the dairy, not rain?’

  The dwarf nodded, beamed hideously all round, chuckling and clapping his hands at his own cleverness. Then he resumed his seat.

  ‘When you found the head, did you also see a heap of clothes?’

  Nod.

  ‘Did you take those clothes away and hide them somewhere else?’

  Shake.

  ‘You’re quite sure, Finny? It wasn’t you who put them in the vault, in the church, where I found you last night?’

  Finny Black shook his head vigorously. A hissing sigh was heard from Rennell Torrance.

  ‘You didn’t touch that heap of clothes in the dairy at all?’

  Shake.

  ‘Very well. Now, Finny, when you went out that night, and into the dairy and hid the head, and then went for a little walk by yourself, did you see any one else about? Any one you knew?’

  Not by the faintest change of intonation did Blount betray the urgency of this question. The figures round the table might have been turned to stone. Bower’s pen was poised above his note-book. Finny looked exceedingly troubled. His eyes flickered towards Robert Seaton, as if in appeal.

  ‘You must tell the truth, Finny,’ said the poet gently.

  Finny gobbled and grimaced a little, jigging uneasily in his chair. Then, with an eeny-meeny-miny-mo gesture which recalled for Nigel a similar one made by Mara at the tea-party in June, the dwarf’s arm and outstretched finger moved slowly round the company and stopped at Rennell Torrance.

  The painter sprang to his feet. ‘That’s a lie!’ he roared. ‘He couldn’t have seen me. I was—’

  ‘Sit down at once, Mr Torrance, and don’t interrupt again, or I’ll have to ask you to leave the room,’ said Blount sharply. He turned again to Finny, who was cowering away from Torrance’s outburst, and resumed his patient, quiet questioning. He elicited the information that Finny had seen Rennell Torrance standing just outside the french windows of the old barn: this had happened when he returned from his ‘little walk’; and Robert and Janet had already testified that Finny had come back ‘drenched to the skin’ about an hour after they’d gone out to look for him—that is, about two a.m.

  ‘Very well,’ said Blount, ‘we’ll return to that presently. Now, Finny. Did you see any one else that night?’

  The dwarf shook his head, but rather uncertainly. Then, after a hesitation, he pointed to his ear.

  ‘Oh, you heard someone, but didn’t see who it was? Splendid, Finny. We’re getting on fine, aren’t we?’

  The gruesome game of question and answer went on. Finny, it appeared, had heard someone walking up towards the house from the direction of the river. This, as far as he could satisfactorily make it known, seemed to have happened not long after he’d come down from the tree, while he was wandering about at the end of the orchard nearest the river. It proved impossible to fix the time more precisely: nor could Finny say whether the footsteps he had heard were a man’s or a woman’s. The dwarf was clearly tired by now. His hand smeared more frequently across his face; and his brain, such as it was, showed signs of becoming confused.

  ‘I’ve only two more questions, Finny,’ said Blount, mopping his brow. ‘You’ve been very good. But, you know, some of these things I’ve been asking you about—well, you could have told us before and saved us a lot of trouble. Why didn’t you? Did someone tell you not to answer the police questions?’

  Finny nodded, a last flicker of intelligence—or was it gratified self-importance?—in his eyes.

  ‘Who was it?’

  Finny pointed, without hesitation, to Janet Seaton.

  ‘Oh, Finny!’ she murmured, in a deeply wounded voice. ‘Oh, Finny, how could you?’

  ‘And my last question—who gave you the key of the vault and told you to stay hidden in the church?’

  Finny’s eyes went wild, as he stared in a sort of agony of inarticulateness at the side of the table where Robert, Janet and Lionel were sitting together. Foam appeared on his lips. Like a ventriloquist’s dummy, he folded up and fell off the chair.

  Chapter 10

  Mara Torrance Remembers

  ‘I CAN’T MAKE out what every one’s playing at here,’ remarked Blount gloomily that afternoon, as he and Nigel sat down on the river bank near Hinton Lacey. ‘Young Seaton, for instance. He sticks to his story. Well, I ought to run him in, I suppose. But what’d be the use? It wouldn’t solve the problem of this crime. He had the nerve to tell me he’d no objection to a spell in quod—couldn’t be worse than the Army, he said.’

  ‘We’re getting old, Blount. We don’t understand the younger generation.’

  ‘Do you think it was Lionel Seaton who hid Finny?’

  ‘I doubt it. That’s why Finny passed out this morning. He has a very primitive, very loyal mind. You handled him beautifully, by the way. But, you see, Robert Seaton had told him he must tell the truth: on the other hand, Finny had heard Lionel declare it was he who’d supplied the key and the food—your Sergeant conveniently opened the door just when Lionel was making this confession.’

  ‘Damned fool, Bower!’ muttered the Superintendent.

  ‘So a conflict of loyalties was set up in Finny’s mind, and he passed out. Which suggests it was not Lionel who’d been hiding him.’

  ‘Well, why on earth should he say he was, then?’

  ‘Protecting his father, I fancy. But the really fascinating question is, why should Finny have been allowed to survive at all?’

  ‘A damned waste of our time! We might have had half the Oxfordshire police chasing after him for weeks if young Miss Seaton hadn’t spotted him yesterday.’

  ‘That’s just the point,’ said Nigel. ‘Someone is playing for time. Is it the murderer? If so, why not have killed Finny and put him in the vault? It’d serve the same purpose, and get rid of a damnably dangerous witness. If it was not the murderer, then what’s he playing for time for—whoever hid Finny?’

  ‘Search me.’

  ‘Time for repentance. Time for tea. Time, you old gipsyman. Time present and time past. Time for—’

  ‘Oh, do stop burbling! Why, what the devil’s up with you now?’

  ‘Oh, my good Lord!’ muttered Nigel. ‘I believe I’ve got it.’

  ‘Got what?’

  ‘The right time, so to speak. D’you ever listen to the B.B.C. programmes at weekends, Blount?’

  ‘Och, you’re just havering. No, I do not.’

  ‘I bet all those highbrow yokels at the Lacey Arms do. You just ask them. And if I’m right,’ Nigel went on meditatively, ‘we may be in for another crop of Mysterious Occurrences at any moment.’

  ‘Uh-huh? Such as—?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know. Disappearances. Kidnappings. Anonymous letters. Can’t say. Just you wait and see, though.’

  ‘And what am I supposed to do about them?’

  ‘Take my tip, Blount, and ignore ’em. Don’t let ’em rattle you.’

  ‘You’re in a strangely freevolous state of mind today. I’ll leave you to it. Must go and ring up Bristol.’

  A quarter of an hour later—he was still lying near the river bank—Nigel heard the puttering of an engine from downstream. Presently Vanessa’s head, tawny and disembodied, could be observed gliding smoothly as if on rails above the level of the water-meadows away to the right, where the river bent backwards in a long loop. Then, round the bend, came a motor-canoe, Vanessa sitting upright in the stern, Lionel and Mara lolling side by side on the cushions amidships. As they approached, Nigel sat up and waved. Vanessa spun the wheel at her side; the canoe careened over, making direct for Nigel. The girl tugged at a lever; the craft shuddered like a fever victim as the engine went into reverse, then rammed the bank at Nigel’s feet with a violent impact.

  ‘Well done, fatty!’ said Lionel.

  ‘I miscalculated,’ replied Vanessa, picking herself up from the floor
of the canoe. ‘Are our bows stove in? Prepare to man the pumps!’

  ‘Prepare to hop out and walk home, love,’ said Lionel. ‘Mara and I want to have a talk with your Mr Strangeways. In private. Buzz off now, there’s a good girl.’

  Reluctantly Vanessa climbed ashore. ‘They’ve been holding hands all the way up the river,’ she remarked treacherously to Nigel as she turned to go. ‘Soppy things. At their age, too.’

  Nigel moored the canoe and climbed down into it, noticing that Mara had altered her sprawling posture on the cushions for a more decorous one.

  ‘Where did you get this beautiful canoe?’ he asked.

  ‘Just been lent it by some friends at Shelford—three miles that direction.’ Lionel jerked his thumb over his shoulder, pointing downstream. ‘No objection, I hope.’

  ‘Don’t be an ass.’

  ‘It’s the trouble about your being identified with the police now,’ said Lionel equably. ‘One tends to read a sinister meaning into every remark you make.’

  ‘Yes, I suppose so.’ Nigel sighed. A cloud, passing over the sun, turned the river’s face from blue-grey to olive-green. The water lisped against the bank. Nigel found himself wishing that Mara would take off the sunglasses which hid her eyes: and, as though she had read his thoughts, she removed them that moment.

  ‘Look here,’ she said, ‘what side are you on?’

  ‘How many sides have you?’

  ‘I’m serious.’

  ‘So am I. It’s not just a question of Rex v. Plash Meadow and the Old Barn, you see. There are so many conflicting interests amongst you all. Amongst the suspects.’

  ‘Such as?’ asked Lionel, his keen young face fastened intently upon Nigel’s face, as though it were the pressure-gauge of some powerful and dangerous engine.

  ‘Well, take Mara. She is torn between love of your father and a rather dim sense of loyalty to her own. Her position is further complicated now by her feeling for you: she’s obviously taken to you since she saw the lengths you’d go to in protecting your father—taken to you, I mean, in a big way, not just the old cat-and-mouse line—’