by Ngaio Marsh
‘Thanks.’
‘That’s Wally’s Cottage. We are about to climb Wally’s Way and that is Wally’s mama, another alcoholic, by the by, leering over the back fence. His father is ferryman at high-tide and general showman in between. The whole boiling of them, the Barrimores, the parson, the doctor, the Major, the Treherns, Miss Cost herself, with pretty well everybody else in the community, stood to lose by Miss Pride’s operations. Apart from arousing the cornered fury of a hunted male, it’s difficult to discover a motive for Miss Cost’s murder. Good evening, Mrs Trehern,’ Alleyn shouted and lifted his hat.
‘Yoo-hoo!’ Mrs Trehern wildly returned, clinging to her back fence. ‘Lock ‘er up. Bloody murderess.’
‘Who’s she mean?’ asked Fox.
‘Miss Pride.’
‘Bless my soul! Quelle galère!’ Fox added, cautiously.
‘You must meet Miss Pride, Br’er Fox, she’s a top authority on French as she should be spoke.’
‘Ah!’ said Fox, ‘To be properly taught from the word go! That’s the thing. What does she think of the gramophone method?’
‘Not much.’
‘That’s what I was afraid of,’ said Fox with a heavy sigh.
Mrs Trehern gave a screech, not unlike one of her son’s and tacked into the cottage. Alleyn went over to the fence and looked into the back garden. The clothes-line had been removed.
They climbed up Wally’s Way to the enclosure. One of Coombe’s men was standing a little way along the hotel path.
Alleyn said to Bailey: ‘The whole area was trampled over when the rain came down. From below, up to the boulder, it’s thick broken bracken and you won’t get results, I’m afraid. On the shelf above the pool where the deceased was crouched, leaning forward, you’ll find her prints superimposed over others. Above that, behind the boulder, is the area where our man, woman or child is thought to have hidden. There’s a clear indication of the place where the rock was prised up and signs that some effort was made to scrape out the footprints. All this, on top of the mess left by the crowd. And to add to your joy, Superintendent Coombe and Dr Maine were up there this morning. Their prints ought to be fairly easy to cut out. The Super was wearing his regulation issue and the doctor’s are ripple-soled. Thompson, give us a complete coverage, will you? And we’ll need casts, Bailey. Better take them as soon as possible.’ He looked up at the sky. Heavy clouds were rolling in from the north-west and a fresh wind had sprung up. The sea was no longer calm. ‘Anyone notice the forecast?’
‘Yes,’ said Fox. ‘Gales and heavy rain before morning.’
‘Damn.’
He produced Coombe’s key for the wire cage which had been locked over the slot machine.
‘Notice this, Br’er Fox, would you? It was installed at Miss Cost’s insistence to baffle courting couples after dark, and not often used. I think it might be instructive. Only Coombe and The Boy-and-Lobster had keys. You can get out of the enclosure by the other gate, which is on a spring and is self-locking on the inside. You could go in by this turnstile and, if you used a length of string, pull the padlock, on the slack of its chain, round to the netting and lock yourself in.’
‘Any reason to think it’s been done?’
‘Only this: there’s a fragment of frayed string, caught in the groove of the wire. Get a shot of it, Thompson, will you, before we take possession.’
Thompson set up his camera. Alleyn unlocked the cage. He gave each of the others a disc and, in turn, they let themselves in. The shelf and the area above it, round the boulder, had been covered with tarpaulins. ‘Laid on by Coombe’s chaps,’ Alleyn said. ‘He’s done a good job, never mind his great boots.’ He stood there for a moment and watched the movement of the welling pool, the sliding lip of water, its glassy fall and perpetual disappearance. Its voices, consulting together, filled the air with their colloquy.
‘Well,’ Alleyn said. ‘Here you are, Bailey. We’ll leave you to it. I’d better have a word with the local PCs. Here are my notes, Fox. Have a look at them for what they’re worth.’
Mr Fox drew out his spectacle case and seated himself in the lee of the hillside. Bailey, a man of few words, at once began work and in a minute or two, Thompson joined him. Alleyn returned to the gates and let himself out. He stood with his back to the enclosure where Miss Emily had hung her notice. He looked down Wally’s Way to the spot where Wally himself had waved and shouted at her and, beyond that, to the back of the Treherns’ cottage and the jetty in Fisherman’s Bay. He was very still for a moment. Then he called to Fox who joined him.
‘Do you see what I see?’ he asked.
Fox placidly related what he saw.
‘Thank you,’ Alleyn said. ‘Bear it in mind, Br’er Fox, when you digest those notes. I’m going along to that blasted outcrop.’ He did so and was met by the constable on duty. The wind was now very strong and much colder. Clouds, inky dark and blown ragged at their edges, drove swiftly in from the sea which had turned steely and was whipped into broken corrugations. The pleasure boats, all heading inshore, danced and bucketed as they came. Portcarrow front was deserted and a procession of cars crawled up the road to the downlands. The hotel launch was discharging a load of people for whom a bus waited by the village jetty. ‘There goes the Major’s drinkcheque,’ thought Alleyn.
‘ ‘Evening,’ he said to the constable. ‘This doesn’t look too promising, does it? What are we in for?’
‘A dirty spell, sir, by all tokens. When she bears in sudden and hard like this from the nor’west there’s only one way of it. Rain, high seas and a gale.’
‘Keep the trippers off, at least. Have you had much trouble?’
‘A lot of foolish inquiries, sir, and swarms of they nippers from down along.’
‘Where’s your mate? Round the point there?’
‘Yes, sir. Nobody’s come past the point, though there was plenty that tried. Sick ones and all.’
‘Anyone you knew?’
‘Two of the maids from The Boy-and-Lobster, sir, giggling and screeching after their silly fashion. The Major came. One of his visitors had dropped a ring, they reckoned, behind that rock, and he wanted to search for it. Us two chaps took a look but it warn’t thereabouts. We kept off the ground, sir. So did he, though not best pleased to be said by us.’
‘Good for you. Sergeant Bailey will deal with it in a minute and we’ll get some pictures. Did Major Barrimore leave any prints, did you notice?’
‘So he did, then, and us reckons they’m the dead spit-identicals for the ones that’s there already.’
‘You use your eyes, I see, in this division. What’s your name?’
‘Carey, sir.’
‘I’ll come along with you.’
They went to the outcrop where Carey’s mate, PC Pomeroy, kept a chilly watch. Alleyn was shown the Major’s footprints where he had pushed forward to the soft verge. He measured them and made a detailed comparison with those behind the outcrop.
‘Good as gold,’ he said. ‘We’ll get casts. You’ve done well, both of you.’
They said: ‘Thank you, sir,’ in unison and glanced at each other. Alleyn asked if they could raise another tarpaulin for the area and Pomeroy said he’d go down to Fisherman’s Bay and borrow one.
They returned with him to the enclosure and found Fox in argument with James Trehern who was wearing an oilskin coat and looked like a lifeboat hero who had run off the rails. His face was scarlet and his manner both cringing and truculent.
‘I left my launch in charge of my mate,’ he was saying, ‘to come up yurr and get a fair answer to a fair question which is what the hell’s going on in these parts? I got my good name to stand by, mister, and my good name’s being called in question. Now.’
Fox, who had his notebook in his palm said: ‘We’ll just get this good name and your address, if you please, and then find out what seems to be the trouble.’
‘Well, Mr Trehern,’ Alleyn said, ‘what is the trouble?’
Pomeroy gave Treh
ern a disfavouring look and set off down the road. Trehern pulled at the peak of his cap and adopted a whining tone. ‘Not to say, sir,’ he said to Alleyn, ‘as how I’m out to interfere with the deadly powers of the law. Us be lawful chaps in this locality and never a breath of anything to the contrary has blowed in our direction. Deny that if you’ve got the face to, Bill Carey!’ he added turning on that officer.
‘Address yourself,’ Carey said stuffily, ‘to them that’s axing you. Shall I return to my point, sir?’
‘Yes, do, thank you, Carey,’ Alleyn said and received a salute followed by a smart turn. Carey tramped off along the path.
‘Now,’ Alleyn said to Trehern. ‘Give Inspector Fox your name and address and we’ll hear what you’ve got to say.’
He complied with an ill grace. ‘I’ve no call to be took down in writing,’ he said.
‘I thought you were lodging a complaint. Didn’t you, Mr Fox?’
‘So I understood, sir. Are you?’ Fox asked Trehern, and looked placidly at him over the top of his spectacles. ‘We may as well know, one way or the other, while we’re about it.’
‘Just for the record,’ Alleyn agreed.
‘Not to say a complaint,’ Trehern temporized. ‘Don’t put words into my mouth, souls. No call for that.’
‘We wouldn’t dream of it,’ Fox rejoined. ‘Take your time.’
After an uneasy silence, Trehern broke into a long, disjointed plaint. People, he said, were talking. Wally, he inferred, had been taken aside and seduced with ice-cream. Anybody would tell them that what the poor little lad said was not to be relied upon since he was as innocent as a babe unborn and was only out to please all and sundry, such being his guileless nature. They let him ramble on disconsolately until he ran out of material. Fox took notes throughout.
Alleyn said: ‘Mr Trehern, we meant to call on you this evening but you’ve anticipated us. We want to search your house and have a warrant to do so. If it suits you we’ll come down with you, now.’
Trehern ran the tip of his tongue round his mouth and looked frightened. ‘What’s that for?’ he demanded. ‘What’s wrong with my property? I be’ant got nothing but what’s lawful and right and free for all to see.’
‘In that case you can have no objection.’
‘It’s a matter of principle, see?’
‘Quite so.’
Trehern was staring through the wire enclosure at the Spring where Bailey and Thompson had begun to pack up their gear. ‘Yurr!’ he said. ‘What’s that! What be they chaps doing up there? Be they looking fur footprints?’
‘Yes.’
‘They won’t find our Wal’s then! They won’t find his’n. Doan’t ‘ee tell me they will, mister. I know better.’
‘He was there yesterday.’
‘Not up to thicky shelf, he warn’t. Not up to the top neither.’
‘How do you know it matters where he may have been? Do you know how Miss Cost was killed?’
Trehern gaped at him.
‘Well,’ Alleyn said, ‘do you feel inclined to tell us, Mr Trehern?’
He said confusedly that everyone was talking about stones being thrown.
‘Ah,’ Alleyn said. ‘You’re thinking of the night you encouraged Wally to throw stones at Miss Pride, aren’t you?’
Trehern actually ducked his head as if he himself was some sort of target. ‘What’s the lad been telling you?’ he demanded. ‘He’s silly. He’ll say anything.’
Alleyn said: ‘We’ll leave it for the moment and go down to the house.’
He called through the gate for Bailey and Thompson to follow and led the way down. Trehern looked at his back and opened and shut his hands.
‘Will you move along, Mr Trehern?’ Fox invited him. ‘After you.’
Trehern walked between them down to his cottage.
There were no visitors. The nets were half blown off the fence. The hollyhocks along the front path bent and sprang back in the wind, and the sign rattled.
Trehern stopped inside the gate. ‘I want to see thick. I want to see the writing.’
Alleyn showed him the warrant. He examined it with a great show of caution and then turned to the door.
Alleyn said: ‘One moment.’
‘Well? What then?’
‘It will save a great deal of time and trouble if you will let us see the thing we’re most interested in. Where have you put the clothes-line?’
‘I don’t have to do nothing,’ he said, showing the whites of his eyes. ‘You can’t force me.’
‘Certainly not. It’s your choice.’ He looked at Fox. ‘Will you take the outhouses? We can go round this way.’
He led the way round to the backyard.
Fox said pleasantly: ‘This’ll be the shed where you keep all your gear, won’t it? I’ll just take a look round, if you please.’
It was crammed with a litter of old nets, broken oars, sacking, boxes, tools and a stack of empty gin bottles. Alleyn glanced in and then left it to Fox. There was a hen coop at the far end of the yard with a rubbish heap nearby that looked as if it had been recently disturbed.
‘Give me that fork, would you, Fox?’ he said and walked down the path with it. Trehern started to follow him and then stood motionless. The first of the rain drove hard on their backs.
The clothes-line had been neatly coiled and buried under the rubbish. Alleyn uncovered it in a matter of seconds.
‘Shall we get under shelter?’ he said and walked back past Trehern to the shed. He wondered, for a moment, if Trehern would strike out at him but he fumbled with his oilskin coat and stayed where he was.
‘All right, Fox,’ Alleyn said. ‘First time lucky. Here we are.’
He gave Fox the coil and took from his pocket the piece of trip-wire from Coombe’s office. They held the ends together. ‘That’s it,’ said Fox.
Alleyn looked at Trehern. ‘Will you come here for a moment?’ he asked.
He thought Trehern was going to refuse. He stood there with his head lowered and gave no sign. Then he came slowly forward, lashed now, by the rain; a black shining figure.
‘I am not going to arrest you at this juncture,’ Alleyn said, ‘but I think it right to warn you that you are in a serious position. It is quite certain that the wire which, two days ago, was stretched across the way up to the shelf above the Spring, has been cut from this line. Photography and accurate measurements of the strands will prove it. Is there anything you want to say?’
Trehern’s jaw worked convulsively as if he were chewing gum. He made a hoarse indeterminate sound in his throat: like a nervous dog, Alleyn thought. At last he said: ‘Who-sumdever done them tricks was having no more than a bit of fun. Boy-fashion. No harm in it.’
‘You think not?’
‘If it was my Wal, I’ll have the hide off of him.’
‘I shouldn’t go in for any more violence if I were you, Mr Trehern. And Wally didn’t rig the trip-wire. It was done by a man who knows how to use his hands and it was done with a length of your clothes-line which you’ve tried to conceal. Will you make a statement about that? You are not compelled to do so. You must use your own judgment. ’
‘A statement! And be took down in writing? Not such a damned fool. Lookie-yurr! What’s these silly larks to do with Elspeth Cost? It’s her that’s laying cold, be’ant it? Not t’other old besom.’
‘Of course,’ Alleyn said, swallowing the epithet. After all, he’d thrown one or two himself, at Miss Emily. ‘So you don’t think,’ he said, ‘that Miss Cost was mistaken for Miss Pride?’
‘I do not, mister. Contrariwise. I reckon one female done it on t’other.’
‘What were you doing at half past seven this morning?’
‘Asleep in my bed.’
‘When did you wake?’
‘How do I know when I woke? Hold on, though.’
‘Yes?’
‘Yes, b’God!’ Trehern said slowly. ‘Give a chap time to think, will you? I disremembered but it’s come back, like. I h
eered the lad, banging and hooting about the place. Woke me up, did young Wal, and I hollered out to him to shut his noise. He takes them fits of screeching. Por lil’ chap.’ Trehern added with a belated show of parental concern. ‘Gawd knows why, but he does. I look at the clock and it’s five past eight. I rouse up my old woman which is a masterpiece of a job she being a mortal heavy slumberer, and tell ‘er to wet a pot of tea. Nothing come of it. She sunk back in her beastly oblivyan. So I uprose myself and put the kettle on and took a look at the weather which were mucky.’
‘Was Wally still in the house?’
‘So ‘e were, then, singing to hisself after his simple fashion and setting in a corner.’
‘Did you see anybody about when you looked out of doors?’
Trehern peered sidelong at him. He waited for a moment and then said: ‘I seed the doctor, in ‘is launch. Putting out across the gap to go home, he was, having seen Bessy Trethaway, over the way, yurr, come to light with another in this sinful vale of tears.’
‘Is your clock right?’
‘Good as gold,’ he said quickly. ‘Can’t go wrong.’
‘Can I see it?’
He looked as if he might refuse but in the end, lurched into the house, followed by Fox, and returned with a battered alarm clock. Alleyn checked it by his watch.
‘Six minutes slow,’ he said.
Trehern burst out angrily: ‘I don’t have no call for clocks! I’m a seafaring chap and read the time of day off of the face of nature. Sky and tides is good enough for me and my mates in the bay’ll bear me out. Six minutes fast or six minutes slow by thicky clock’s no matter to me. I looked outer my winder and it wur dead water and dead water come when I said it come and if that there por female was sent to make the best of ’ erself before ‘er Maker when I looked outer my winder she died at dead water and that’s an end of it.’
‘Trehern,’ Alleyn said, ‘what are you going to make of this? Mrs Trethaway’s baby was born at seven-thirty and Dr Maine left in his launch about ten minutes later. You’re a full half hour out in your times.’
There was a long silence.
‘Well?’ Alleyn said. ‘Any comment?’
He broke into a stream of oaths and disjointed expostulations. Did they call him a liar? Nobody called Jim Trehern a liar and got away with it. If they weren’t going to believe him why did they ask? There was talk against him in the bay. Jealousy seemed to be implied. His anger modulated through resentfulness and fear into his familiar occupational whine. Finally he said that a man could make mistakes, couldn’t he? When Alleyn asked if he meant that he’d mistaken the time, Trehern said he didn’t want his words taken out of his mouth and used against him. He could scarcely have made a more dubious showing. He was joined briefly by his spouse who emerged from the interior, stood blinking in the back doorway, and was peremptorily ordered back by her husband. Inside the cottage, actors could be heard, galloping about on horses and shouting ‘C’m’ on. Let’s go,’ to each other. Wally, Alleyn supposed, was enjoying television.
