by S. T. Haymon
‘Thanks for the natural history lesson,’ Jurnet said, risking the impertinence and not giving a damn anyway. ‘We know all about eels, Jack and I.’
When, in response to a call, the two had arrived at Bullen Hall, it had not been immediately obvious which was the casualty. A large woman, her dress rucked up to disclose formidable bloomers, lay on the gravel path, mewing. A short distance away, young Steve Appleyard sprawled white-faced on the grass, Jessica Chalgrove kneeling by his side. On the grass above the moat, two men – one of them Mr Benby, the estate surveyor; the other, judging by his apron bulging with tools, a carpenter or handyman – stood guard over a sheet of black polythene, from beneath which a pair of feet protruded.
The feet were what attracted Jurnet’s first attention. There was something decidedly odd about the feet. Tatters of brown stuff that could conceivably once have been socks adhered to them, and tatters of skin and bone that could conceivably once have been toes.
The handyman, whose name was Bert Archer, said shakily: ‘Wait till you see his bloomin’ face.’ Mr Benby stumbled away without saying anything, and sat down clumsily on a nearby seat, dislodging an antique bicycle propped there. The bicycle clattered to the ground where it lay like an additional victim of the prevailing calamity. A wheel revolved frenetically for a few seconds, then stilled: dead like whatever was under the black polythene.
It would have been hard enough, even without the heaving stomach, to have recognised in those ravaged remains the debonair new curator of Bullen Hall, the well-known author, the romantic young man with the tumbling curls. Sergeant Ellers, who had turned back the polythene a little way, did not see fit to turn it back further.
Jurnet lent a hand to drag the sheeting back into place.
‘Get back to the car, Jack, and get things moving.’ To the handyman: ‘Anyone done something about getting medical aid for the lady?’
‘She’ll be all right.’ Bert Archer did not sound notably sympathetic. He crossed over to the woman and stood looking down at her. ‘Police is here, Mabel, and you showing your what’s-it. Ought to know better at your age!’
The woman did not stop mewing, but a large hand moved like a questing lobster and tugged unavailingly at the skirt of her dress. The large bottom levered itself off the path to release the bunched-up material.
‘Tha’s more like it,’ the handyman said encouragingly, ‘though you sound a right old fool, Mabel, belling away like a randy heifer. When I tell ’em back in the village –’
‘That’ll do, Bert Archer!’ Mrs Barwell sat up abruptly. ‘Stop your gabbing and gi’ me a hand.’
Jurnet murmured softly to Ellers, who had remained standing where he was, looking green and shaken: ‘What are you waiting for, boyo? Get on with it while I find out what ails the young gentleman.’ He watched as the little Welshman disappeared at a sudden run round the corner of the house. Hope he makes it to the shrubbery, he thought, forcing back the vomit he felt rising anew in his own throat.
On the narrow strip between moat and house some stones of varying sizes lay strewn about the grass. Raising his eyes to the roof, Jurnet saw that the line of the balustrade was interrupted by a gap perhaps two feet wide, whence several pieces of masonry seemed to have fallen away.
From the garden bench Mr Benby moaned: ‘If I told him once not to go near that edge, I told him a dozen times. Never mind it looks solid as a rock, don’t trust it, I told him.’
‘Not your fault,’ Jurnet returned soothingly. ‘No call to take on.’
So: fell off the roof at the end of the peninsula which housed the curator’s flat and the floors below, and landed in the moat. Only, what in heaven’s name did they keep there? Man-eating crocodiles?
Jessica Chalgrove stood at his side and said: ‘You don’t have to be worried about Steve. It’s just that he’s never seen a dead body before.’
The detective looked at the girl curiously. She looked pale, the dark eyes enormous in the heart-shaped face. Yet there was something – the way she held herself, the small breasts thrusting against her T-shirt; a sense of power and elation at being in control. For the first time Jurnet saw her as a person in her own right, not as one half – the compliant half at that – of a pair.
‘What about you?’
‘Oh, I haven’t either. But I’m fine,’ the girl answered, as if irked by the question. ‘Steve and I were the first ones here. We heard Mrs Barwell screaming, and we came running. At first we couldn’t imagine – we thought she’d gone bonkers or something. Then she pointed to the moat and we saw them.’
Her eyes, if possible, grew even larger.
‘Them?’
‘The eels. Creat, enormous things, like the sea serpents that came out of the sea at Troy and killed Laocoon and his sons –’
Jurnet, who did not recognise the allusion, nodded nevertheless.
‘They were tumbling about in the water. Some of them were coiled round Mr Shelden’s body. They kept rolling him over and over, almost as if they were playing with a beach ball. Only all the time they were biting and tearing –’ For a moment the girl’s voice trembled. Quickly recovering: ‘I didn’t have to think who it was because he was still wearing his velvet jacket. Steve said last night he’d like to get himself a jacket like that. Mrs Barwell was lying on the ground having hysterics, and Steve nearly passed out, but I –’ now there was no mistaking her pride in her own self-mastery – ‘first I went and phoned the police. I particularly asked if they could send you. I hope you don’t mind –’
‘What we’re here for,’ Jurnet answered stolidly, concealing his gratification.
‘– And then, when I came back, there was a spring rake one of the gardeners had left out on the grass, and I went and got it, and tried to beat the beastly things off. I would have, too, if Mr Benby and Bert Archer hadn’t come to see what was the matter.’ She sounded aggrieved. ‘Bert lay down at the edge and got hold of Mr Shelden’s jacket, and the two of them dragged him out on to the grass.’ Jessica Chalgrove broke off and flushed a deep red which made her look more like the girl the detective had seen the day before. ‘I wouldn’t want you to think badly of Steve –’
‘Never occurred to me,’ Jurnet replied truthfully. ‘All I could do not to throw up myself, and I’ve seen more bodies than you’ve had hot breakfasts.’
‘He’s awfully sensitive, that’s what it is. Things affect him more than they do some people. But being Laz Appleyard’s son –’
‘Feels he has to be a toughie, eh?’ Jurnet smiled. ‘Want to know what my colleague, Detective-Sergeant Ellers, is doing at this moment? Bringing up his eggs and bacon somewhere we can’t see him. Tell that to your boy friend when he’s feeling ready to listen. It may help him feel better.’
‘I will!’ she exclaimed. Soberly she persisted: ‘It’s because Mr Appleyard died the same way – drowned, I mean – and Steve’s probably wondering if there aren’t eels like that over at the mill.’
‘Sounds very unlikely to me.’ Knowing about the deceased hero’s near-decapitation enabled the detective to speak with conviction. ‘Anyway, as yet, we don’t even know how Mr Shelden died – whether by drowning, or a fall from the roof, or something else altogether. Could have had a coronary, for all we know to the contrary, as of this moment. Take the young fellow home and make him a good, strong cup of coffee. He’ll feel better in no time!’
By the time Sergeant Ellers came back, looking pale, Mrs Barwell had gone, angrily rejecting the offer of a lift home. Steve Appleyard and Jessica Chalgrove had gone, too, the girl doing the leading this time, but already with enough sense to conceal her new-found awareness of her power. Bert Archer and Mr Benby stood about uncertainly, hoping for their dismissal, but not liking to ask for it.
‘All laid on,’ the little Welshman reported. His eyes turned, unwillingly compelled, towards the square of black polythene. His whole body stiffened.
‘Ben! He’s moving!’
Jurnet began: ‘Don’t talk so daft –’ when
Bert Archer shouted: ‘Oh, my God!’ Mr Benby collapsed on to the seat again.
Unbelievable as it seemed, the polythene was moving, in light-catching undulations which gave it a life of its own. Then, out of the end of pyjama leg which showed above a macerated foot, a yellowish head with small eyes appeared, weaving from side to side; a heavily muscled jaw, and teeth like executioners. Mesmerised, the men on the lawn watched as the great eel, a good four feet long and thick in proportion, with a grace that was more baleful than all its ugliness, slid from its hiding place and slithered towards the moat.
It had almost reached the water when, with an inarticulate cry, the handyman sprang forward, a knife in his hand. Jurnet closed his eyes involuntarily. When he opened them again, the creature’s head lay almost severed from a body which rippled a moment longer, then was still.
‘The bloody bugger!’
Rage shook the handyman; but the hand with the knife held steady. When the head was off, and lay gleaming on the grass, the man turned his attention to the body, planting a foot squarely on the severed end, and taking a firm grip on the tail. The knife flashed, too fast for Jurnet to follow: a sharp pull and an odd rasping sound, and the eel’s skin peeled off like one of those long white gloves debutantes used to wear halfway up their arms when they went to Buckingham Palace to curtsey to the King and Queen.
For a moment longer the denuded corpse, unexpectedly frail without its protective sheath, lay on the grass, a monster made piteous. Then the man kicked out and sent it sliding down the slope into the moat. He looked down at the skin in his hand as if surprised to see it there, and threw it after the body. The head lay forgotten, a bluebottle already buzzing at an unregarding eye.
A sound of splashing came from the moat. The eels had returned for another funeral wake.
‘Not fair on the eel, of course,’ the Superintendent remarked. ‘Only doing what it was put on earth for – to eat whatever fate sends it, so that it can grow big and strong enough to fulfil its own particular destiny. Just as it’s ours to discover exactly what happened to poor Shelden.’
‘Yes, sir,’ Jurnet said. ‘After the boys took the body away, Jack and I went over the bit of lawn in front of the flat door. It’s a kind of recess, with the building sticking out on either side, like a letter E, only without the middle bit, if you follow me. There were several bits of stone that appeared to have fallen from the parapet. What we also found was a small stained area that could have been blood – Forensic ’ll be letting you know – and the top joint of a little finger.’
The Superintendent’s head came up with a jerk.
‘On the grass? At the edge of the moat, d’you mean?’
‘A good bit further back than that. You tend to think of it as a little bit of grass because the scale of the house is so great it dwarfs it. If it was your back garden you’d think it quite a fair size. I reckon Mr Shelden must ’ve landed there, and not in the moat at all; and – not knowing what he was doing, most likely – started to crawl across the grass, and rolled down the slope into the water.’
‘Poor devil!’
‘Yes, sir. We had a look at the roof as well. Acres of it. It’s like another world. Shelden must have shot the bolts on his front door last thing, after the party. We had to get up there the long way round, through the main house.’
‘Party?’ the Superintendent inquired sharply. ‘Are you suggesting Shelden may have been the worse for drink?’
‘I wouldn’t have said so. He certainly drank a lot of wine, and I suppose it could have made him forget it wasn’t safe to lean on the parapet, but it didn’t seem to affect him –’ Jurnet added with calculation – ‘that I could see.’
‘You mean you were there? I didn’t know you were friends with the Appleyards of Bullen Hall.’
‘No more I am.’ Jurnet had no heart to prolong the tease. ‘Never set eyes on ’em till last night. I just happened to be over there to see some friends of mine who live in the Coachyard, and Mr Coryton, the retiring curator, asked me along.’
‘Oh.’ Coldly: ‘Enjoy yourself?’
‘Very interesting, thank you, sir. In the course of the evening Mrs Coryton happened to mention that she and Mr Coryton, when they’d occupied the curator’s flat themselves, often used to sleep out on the tiles on summer nights. She said she’d left behind an air bed for Mr Shelden, in case he ever fancied doing the same. And, sure enough, we found the bed on the roof, pumped up, with a blanket and a pyjama top on it. So I reckon Shelden went over to the balustrade to admire the night view before turning in; leaned against it without thinking, and had the whole caboodle give way under him.’
‘Hm. Sounds probable. Soon as we hear what Colton’s proposing to tell the Coroner we’ll get out a statement for the Press. Well-known literary figure, the media ’ll be down in droves. Didn’t I read somewhere he was going to do a life of Appleyard of Hungary?’ That was a funny thing. They had come, he and Ellers, down from the roof by the stair which led to the minstrels’ gallery and so into the room where Anne Boleyn and her brother had once danced in passionate partnership; and from there across the little landing into the flat proper. In a room plainly intended as a study they had found Ferenc Szanto, the Hungarian, in the act of loading a number of files and cardboard boxes on to a metal trolley.
The man had shown no dismay at the detectives’ sudden appearance; greeted Jurnet as an old friend, and acknowledged his introduction to Detective-Sergeant Ellers with a handclasp that made the little Welshman wince.
‘Good to see you again, Inspector!’ Then, rearranging his broad features into an expression of appropriate gravity: ‘Though for such cause as I guess it must be – dreadful, dreadful! Last night so full of life, so full of plans, and this morning –!’ The man threw out his hands in a gesture more Asiatic than European. ‘We are indeed the playthings of fate, alas!’
‘Alas it is and no mistake,’ Jurnet agreed. ‘May I ask how you came to know about Mr Shelden?’
‘Elena told me, is how. Is why else am I here?’ The Hungarian looked at the detective with a childlike confidence that nothing he said would be taken amiss. ‘Elena says to me the police are bound to come and poke about, and they are so clumsy they will mess up all the papers she has put into proper order with so much trouble. So I am to go quick and bring them all back to her before the police arrive, and she will put them away until she finds another writer to write the life of Appleyard of Hungary.’ He finished: ‘Myself, I think she will have to wait for a long time.’
‘I should have thought people would be falling over themselves applying for the job.’
‘Elena does not want just people. She looks for somebody special who may not be there to be found.’ The Hungarian lifted a box off the desk which was the principal piece of furniture in the pleasant, oak-panelled room. ‘You permit me to remove, as Elena wishes? They have, after all, been here for one day only. They cannot, as you say, be evidence.’
Perversely, because well as he understood Miss Appleyard’s strictures on the police he could not, for that very reason, let her off scot-free, Jurnet said, in his best TV cop manner: ‘Nothing must be taken away, sir, till we’ve completed our inquiries. In the circumstances, I won’t ask you to unload that trolley. Just stick it over there, in the corner. Leave everything else exactly as it is. And tell Miss Appleyard we shan’t poke about a minute longer than we can help.’ The detective looked appraisingly at the large, lumbering figure in front of him. ‘About that life of Appleyard. Aren’t you the one should be doing it by rights? You were with him in Hungary. Coming from you it’d be first-hand.’
‘Words!’ Ferenc Szanto exclaimed, as if the other had just demanded of him something utterly preposterous. ‘I am a blacksmith. If I have bad iron I throw it away, but who throws away bad words? I am afraid of words that tell falsehood and deceit.’
‘Words don’t have to be lies. They can be truth as well.’
‘Then I am even more afraid.’
‘I wonder who they
’ll get instead,’ the Superintendent ruminated aloud. ‘The book should be a sure-fire bestseller, judging by some of the stories about Appleyard of Hungary one still hears going the rounds. What they say about him in Budapest I’ve no idea; but here in Norfolk, if a quarter of the tales they tell are true, King Solomon and Don Juan put together weren’t in the same league. Some of the women must still be alive, though. So it probably couldn’t be published, anyway.’
‘Miss Appleyard, his sister, seemed to think Mr Shelden’s was to have been the definitive biography.’
‘She may not have had a clue as to what her brother was up to.’
‘Shouldn’t have thought, myself, there was much escaped Miss Appleyard.’
‘Ah,’ said the Superintendent sourly. ‘I’d forgotten you’d met the lady.’
The phone rang, and the Superintendent, taking it off the hook, listened a moment; and then signalled to the other two, who were moving unobtrusively towards the door, to stay.
‘Yes,’ he said quietly into the mouthpiece, and occasionally: ‘I see.’ As the one-sided conversation prolonged itself, he printed the words GRASS and then BLOOD in capitals on his desk blotter, embellishing them with scrolls and curlicues. ‘Fracture dislocation at level C 5-6. Right –’ He wrote that on the blotter, too. When, after a final ‘Yes’, he hung up, he sat for a little in silence, looking down at his handiwork.
At last he said: ‘Colton says Shelden died from drowning – but only just. If he hadn’t drowned, he’d have given up the ghost within minutes from the multiple fractures and internal injuries – the details of which I’ll spare you for the moment – which, until you turned up with that fingertip and Forensic confirmed that it was Shelden’s blood on the grass, Colton assumed to be the result of falling from a considerable height into a body of water nowhere deeper than four feet six.’
