Death of a Serpent (The Inspector Felix Mysteries Book 8)
Page 8
‘I’ve got young Caroline Stickland here, Chief Inspector,’ smiled the Colonel, again greeting them at the door. ‘She’s in my study with Raymond. It’s rather good news, from our point of view.’
The two of them were sitting together on the sofa, looking nervous.
‘We’re dreadfully sorry, Chief Inspector,’ said Caroline, ‘but we were frightened to say anything until we knew Alice was safe. Tell them, Ray.’
‘Well, it’s like this, sir,’ said Raymond, blushing furiously. He tumbled it out, as if to prevent Felix from interrupting. ‘When I told you I went for a walk after the party, it wasn’t to the Mole, it was in Home Wood, with Caroline. While we were there we saw some men beating up Joe Dutton. They were really weighing into him.’
‘I see. Weapons or fists?’
‘I didn’t see any weapons but it was quite dark under the trees.’
‘Do you know who they were?’
‘They had their faces covered but I know the ones who caught us,’ said Caroline, ‘and some of the others. There was quite a gang of them. They were all round him, hitting him. Ray said to run for help and he’d try to stop them. He was very brave.’
‘No I wasn’t. Not as brave as you’ve been.’
‘You let yourself be arrested for murder, said Caroline. ‘That’s brave. Ray ran towards them shouting at them to leave Joe alone but they grabbed him and stuffed a cloth in his mouth and I stupidly tripped over so they got me too and then they made us go with them. It was three big chaps, so we had no choice really. They took us to one of their huts and threatened us. They said they were teaching Joe not to come back to Eden, and if we told on them it would be the worst for Alice because she was as bad as he was, having encouraged him. They were horrible. They kept us there for a while, then let us go.’
‘We went straight back for Joe, obviously,’ said Raymond, ‘but we searched and searched and couldn’t find him. I suppose they’d put him over the clifftop, but we didn’t know that then. We were in a bit of a bind. We didn’t know how badly hurt he was but we thought he must be able to walk, or crawl anyway, because he wasn’t where we saw him last. His van was still there so we decided he’d probably managed to get back to the house. I mean, he hadn’t tried to drive off or anything. We searched the sheds and the workshops and so on, in case he was lying injured, but he wasn’t in any of them.’
‘We didn’t want to raise the alarm unnecessarily,’ said Caroline, ‘because they’d have made us tell who did it and we were worried for Alice, so we decided to wait until the morning. We never dreamed they’d kill him.’
‘How far from the cliff edge did all this happen?’ asked Felix.
‘Forty or fifty yards,’ said Raymond. ‘Not all that near.’
‘Next morning I thought they were probably together, or still asleep,’ said Caroline. ‘But Alice was already out searching for him and then Sergeant Diffy came and told us they’d found him. We were only thinking of Alice. If they were prepared to kill Joe, why not her too? We just couldn’t risk it.’
She gave a little sob and Raymond put an arm round her. ‘We did what we thought best, sir, and you must think she’s in danger too or you wouldn’t have taken her away from Eden.’
Felix gazed at them for a while, then sighed. ‘You’d best give us a list of these fellows. I take it they’re some of the brethren?’
‘Yes they are.’
‘How long were you in the wood before you saw Mr Dutton?’
They looked questioningly at each other. ‘Maybe half an hour,’ said Raymond. ‘We didn’t know who they were hitting at first because they were all round him. I think they had him gagged because he wasn’t crying out, just sort of grunting.’
‘And did you follow him into the wood, as reported?’
‘No, it was as I told you. I didn’t see him until we both did.’
‘And you walked into the wood together?’
Caroline glanced at Raymond. ‘Not together, no. I arranged to meet him there.’
‘In case your mother saw you, I suppose? Never mind, don’t answer that. Raymond, was this after you said goodbye to Sister Mary?’
‘Yes. Just after.’
‘So let’s get this perfectly straight. You left the party and went straight into Home Wood where you met up with Caroline. So when Mr Dutton’s mother said she saw you following him, she was mistaken?’
‘Yes she was,’ said Raymond. ‘I wasn’t following him but she might well have seen me going into the wood. The path is just in front of her window.’
‘I’m afraid Sister Clarice is a bit cracked,’ said Caroline. ‘Everyone knows that.’
‘Not quite as innocent as we thought,’ said Rattigan as they drove away. ‘And I’ll bet she isn’t.’
‘He certainly transferred his allegiance pretty rapidly,’ chuckled Felix. ‘I expect she pounced on him as soon as those two made it official. She probably sees him as her passport out of there, and who can blame her? He could do worse.’
‘Easy to see why the lads drew a blank — the beggars were keeping shtum. When do we pick them up? They’ll probably guess we’ll be after them now that Alice is out of it.’
‘Tomorrow will do, I think. We’d best have help with this one. We don’t really know how many of them there are and we may get trouble.’
‘Not tonight?’
‘No, I don’t think so. Time’s getting on and I don’t want to be chasing them all over Eden in the dark. If they do a bunk they won’t get far in their birthday suits and homespun tunics. We might take a look at this wood though.’
They lay entwined in the grass of a meadow, the afternoon sun hot upon them. Crickets chirped, and high above a skylark sang.
‘You won’t dump me, will you, now we’ve done it?’ said Caroline. ‘I couldn’t bear it if you did.’
‘Lord no! Why would I do that? I want you forever.’
‘You were in love with Alice a week ago.’
‘I don’t know that I was really. I just thought she was interested in me and you weren’t. You’re much more my sort.’
‘You’re my sort too.’ She pushed him gently away. ‘I must get back or they’ll smell a rat. As far as they’re concerned you’re still a murderer.’
‘This appears to be the main path in,’ said Rattigan, gazing about him. ‘Must be quite an old wood — big trees, not much underbrush.’
‘Probably gone for kindling. You can still see the house, just about. I expect they took him a bit further in than this.’
‘You don’t think they lay in ambush for him?’
‘They might have done. But what would he be doing here at that time of night? My guess is they grabbed him half-asleep from his van, clapped a gag on him and dragged or carried him to where they could work on him. They must have thought they were pretty safe from discovery. Thank God for young lovers, eh?’
‘You don’t think they were fibbing?’
‘Do you?’
‘Not really. We’d soon find out if they were, and it cost them quite a lot to tell us when you think about it, or will when it comes out. Pity they didn’t trust us enough before, but there it is. Do you think we should put her with Alice?’
‘I’m not sure what Miss Burt would think about that. She clearly feels safe enough at the moment and we’ll have this lot in custody by tomorrow. How about if we continue to the clifftop?’
In a few yards both the path and the trees petered out and they were on the highest part of the cliff, a sloping place of wind-stunted heather, presently coming into flower, scrubby gorse bushes, and brambles, the soil in which they grew riven by sudden changes in level and great, longitudinal cracks, some quite fresh, others old and overgrown.
‘This is all on the move presumably.’
‘Even as we speak, no doubt. See how the last of the trees are leani
ng? They’ll be next.’
‘So they’ll have carted him across this lot, unless he was still conscious and could walk, stabbed him and chucked him over. Tricky in the dark. Where’s the edge?’
‘A little beyond that big bush, I should imagine.’
They picked their way to within a yard or so of the precipice. The wind had risen somewhat and they could hear the crash of surf on the beach below but neither cared to risk peering over at it.
‘Thus far and no further, I think. See those little cracks? It wouldn’t take much to set off another landslip.’
‘ I’m wondering if this is where it started,’ said Rattigan, clutching the brim of his bowler against the breeze. ‘It looks a very clean break.’
‘I shouldn’t be surprised,’ said Felix. ‘And a yard or two beyond that is where she puts her flowers.’ He walked a few paces. ‘In which case he must have gone over about here.’ He crouched and peered at the ground. ‘Is it my imagination or is that fresh scuffs?’
‘Could be, but it’s over a week now. We’d do better to look for blood — the stab wound.’
‘Good idea,’ said Felix. He paused in amusement. ‘Why if it’s not old Ben Gunn!’
‘More like Robinson Crusoe,’ chuckled Rattigan. For working along a sandy bank at the very edge of the wood was a deeply tanned and wizened old man wearing only furry knee breeches, the inevitable moccasin boots and a peculiar, conical straw hat. His most striking feature, however, was his luxuriant white beard, which reached almost to his waist. As they came up with him they found him disentangling from a string-net a struggling rabbit. Rising to greet them he nonchalantly dispatched it before adding it to a half dozen already hanging from his belt.
‘Rabbit George, I presume?’ said Felix, offering a hand.
‘George Bugler,’ said the old man affably. ‘And you’re Scotland Yard.’
The detectives introduced themselves.
‘Is that to feed them?’ asked Rattigan, indicating a basket of assorted vegetables.’
George nodded. ‘I farms ’em, basically. It ain’t so good a place for a warren and they have to be encouraged. Once they takes to it, though, they don’t move away. They knows a good thing when they sees it.’ He lifted an edge of the basket and scattered the contents on the ground. ‘This’ll be gone by termorrer.’
‘You don’t use cages, then? I was told you bred them.’
‘Oh, I does that too. This lot’s a bonus. I struggles ter keep up with the demand ter be honest.’
‘From the commune, would that be?’
He nodded. ‘Mostly. They could keep ’em easy enough but they won’t use wire-nettin.’ They likes to make it hard fer themselves so they feels holy. I ain’t holy, so it don’t matter. I don’t let ’em mess with these though, they’re mine.’
‘You’re not a Child of Eden, then?’
The old man chuckled. ‘Bloody foolish nonsense! I’m what you might call an independent contractor. I was here when they came and I shouldn’t be surprised if I’m here when they go. I was gamekeeper to old Sir Archibald Stokes when he had the place, and when he sold up I stayed to help out. There was a lot ter do an’ I never left. It’s a steady livin’ if you don’t want much, which I don’t. I got me little hut and me books and I don’t need nothin’ else. Now ask me how old I am.’
‘How old are you?’ said Felix dutifully.
‘Seventy-eight,’ twinkled Rabbit George. ‘Don’t look it do I?’
‘That’ll be the sea air,’ averred Felix, preferring not to perjure himself.
‘Is that all you do — the rabbits?’ asked Rattigan, always interested in how people made their living.
‘Bless you no! There’s the carpentry and buildin’ repairs and axe work. I does it all, so they don’t have to.’
‘But isn’t that cheating, getting someone else to do it?’
‘Heh! You tell me,’ chuckled George. ‘I ain’t complainin’.
‘I take it you don’t think much of these people?’ said Felix.
‘The new ones? Naw. Like little kids they are — needs their noses an’ arses wiped. Some of the older ones are all right.’
‘What about the Truscotts?’
‘They’re all right. I makes it my business ter keep an eye ’em. And Gertie Truscott is a lovely woman.’
‘Did you know Joe Dutton? I suppose you must have done.’
‘Poor lad, yes I did. He’d more sense than the rest of ’em put together. He’d have gone far. And little Alice broken-hearted. How is she now?’
‘She’s staying with a friend. I think she’ll be all right in time.’
The old man snorted crossly. ‘No thanks to ’er foolish parents. Good ter get ’er away from ’em for a bit.’
‘Why do you say that?’
All the while they were talking they were moving along the chest-high bank, George eventually stopping to liberate another rabbit. ‘Only a little ’un,’ he said. ‘He can go back. They rubs each other up the wrong way, those two, and that Brian is a waste of trousers.’
‘Any suspicions as to who murdered Joe?’
The old man shook his head. ‘Take yer pick. They all hated him ’cause he had a bit of sense and they haven’t.’ He raised a hand in farewell. ‘If you wants a decent cuppa call at my hut anytime.’
They watched him disappear into the trees, laden with rabbits and half-dragging his unwieldy basket.
‘Quite a character,’ chuckled Rattigan.
‘He’s one on his own, isn’t he? I’ve a feeling we’ll be taking him up on that cuppa.’
‘Bloodstains now?’
But despite considerable searching they arrived back at the house and the beginning of the path without finding a single spot of it, or even any evidence of the beating up.
‘Easy to miss,’ said Rattigan. ‘And they might have finished him off at the cliff edge, or thought they had. He gestured at a ground-floor window. There’s Clarice Dutton’s room. I wonder what she really saw?’
‘I’m wondering if she saw anything at all,’ said Felix. ‘Anyone going into the wood in moonlight would surely have been little more than a silhouette. She might perhaps recognise her son but she can’t have been so familiar with Raymond. She could have heard him call goodbye, perhaps, and put two and two together.’
‘Or she knew about his assignation with Caroline.’
‘Yes, or that. And given her attitude to outsiders she might have decided to accuse him whether she saw him or not, possibly to save a member of the commune from being suspected. But if she really did see Dutton, what was he doing going in there voluntarily?’
‘A forged note?’ said Rattigan doubtfully. ‘A false appeal for help? Doesn’t seem very likely, does it?’
‘He’d have to be pretty credulous to fall for that. He must have known how they felt about him for one thing. Suppose she’d learned, or guessed, what happened that night. Perhaps her loyalty to the commune came first. After all, what did she say? He was dead to her anyway, having left her for the wicked Land of Nod. We’d best have another word with that lady at some point.’
Chapter Ten
At ten o’clock the following morning nine assorted police officers, some coopted from nearby Chartington, disgorged from a small fleet of Black Marias and descended upon peaceful Eden.
‘I’m very sorry, Sister Gertrude,’ said Sergeant Diffey, ‘but we’re under orders to search the house.’
‘For whom or what, may I ask?’
‘The suspected murderer of Joseph Dutton, madam.’
‘Then I suppose you’d better had,’ sighed that redoubtable lady, ‘though you won’t find him here.’
There were, indeed, no men at the house, apart from one dwarfish and apparently simple-minded greybeard in the kitchen, and they advanced with some trepidation into Eden.
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br /> ‘How many of these fellows are there, sir?’ asked a constable.
‘There could be up to twenty of them,’ said Yardley. ‘Watch out for the naked ones; they’re the worst.’
‘Good Lord! Armed?’
‘Clubs, probably,’ said Rattigan with a twinkle. ‘Or bows and arrows.’
‘Best not shoot until you see the whites of their eyes,’ grinned Felix.
But it was a group of six men who approached, watched at a safe distance by their friends and helpmeets. The presumed Adamites, they noticed, now sported short, rabbit-skin kilts.
‘Is it about Joe Dutton?’ asked one of them.
‘Yes, it is,’ said Felix.’
‘It was us that roughed him up. There’ll be no need for violence. We’ll come quietly.’
They’d been placed in Mole police station’s single cell. Some were sitting on the narrow bed, some leaning against the wall. There was a pronounced redolence of unwashed bodies.
Identifying himself as Brother Stanley, their spokesman wore the homespun tunic and knitted tights of an Edenist. ‘We didn’t kill him,’ he said. ‘I doubt we even hurt him that much.’
‘So you just left him there?’ accused Rattigan.
‘No, we put him back where we found him, in the back of his van. I went back later to check on him and found he’d gone, so he was all right then.’
‘When was this?’
‘I don’t know. We don’t keep clock time.’
‘Was anyone there to witness this act of altruism?’ asked Felix.
‘Not that I was aware of,’ said Brother Stanley, apparently immune to sarcasm. ‘The place was in darkness.’
‘Were his legs bound?’
‘Yes, but he was gone anyway. He either got free or someone found him.’
‘I see. And which of you gentlemen took Sister Caroline and her friend away with you?’
‘We did,’ said an Adamist. ‘Only to get them out of it. We didn’t keep them long.’
‘We didn’t put him over the cliff,’ said another. ‘We never went near it. We didn’t stab him either.’