Fellaby Moor Hall was at the end of a long drive, over cattle-grids, across a quarter mile of sweeping park land. The house was a battlemented Elizabethan manor, built in the form of a hollow square whose wings overlooked the broad sweep of steps leading up to its main door. It was a grim building, as dour as the landscape which fathered it, with tall, stately, leaded windows, and edged with rose-beds that must, in season, have been a showpiece. In a tightly restrained manner, it was not inelegant.
A woman-servant in her middle sixties showed Wright into an immense stone-flagged hall that could have been a blue-print for a newer and better Fellaby museum, so replete was it with oak settles, oil paintings, heraldry and ancient sporting prints. On the wall was a tombstone brass of a Crusader in armour which Wright was sure must have been pillaged from some parish church.
Sir Howard was standing with his agent beside an enormous open fire in which flames were licking the bark off half a tree. He was wearing tailor-cut trousers of cavalry twill, a sports-coat with leather guards at cuffs and elbows, a yellow waistcoat with an overlaid pattern of red check and a spotted bow tie. Colonel Hawley was in riding breeches and a hacking jacket, his calves encased in knee-length leather leggings.
‘Ah! Come in, Wright! I don’t know whether you’ve met the Colonel? Damned fine show I think they put on this morning. Not bad at all for Fellaby. I thought the bishop laid it on in the right places, too.’
He turned to dismiss Hawley.
‘I’ll leave that to you, then. Get in touch with Jevons. If Burroughs is going to be awkward, play for time. Get it shelved until the next monthly meeting.——Now, sergeant, my good lady is waiting for us upstairs.’
He conducted Wright along a corridor flanked with statuary and armoured breast-plates.
‘I keep meaning to get rid of half this junk. Must give it to Gill.
Damn it, I gave them the building. I ought to give them something worth putting in it.’
They went up a narrow, wooden, spiral staircase, so dark and unguarded that Wright felt forward with his toes on every tread. Lesueur lifted the latch of a studded door and showed him into a room in which his wife was waiting with towering piles of buttered scones and home-made cake.
It was a large, square room in the west wing, overlooking the main forecourt, and here ancient and modern met in a superb unity of rarity and comfort. Small, oval eighteenth century miniatures decorated the walls. There was a Sheraton writing-desk that must have been beyond price and an inlaid coffee-table on which Wright was afraid to set down his plate. At the same time, he counted four night-storage heaters ranged round the walls, and the shuttered cabinet of the television set must have been custom-made at a price that ran into hundreds.
Lady Lesueur was younger than her husband, a small but well filled-out figure in a brown skirt, with black hair tinged with wisps of grey. She was wearing fur-lined ankle-boots, as if even the cosiest of tea-parties was an interruption in the outdoor round.
‘You know, Mr Wright, I was saying to Sir Howard, I think I must have been everywhere there is to go, and yet this is the first time I’ve actually met a man from Scotland Yard.’
‘You move in the wrong circles, my dear.’
‘I find it wonderfully exciting,’ she said. ‘Do you take milk, Mr Wright? I’ll leave you to put the sugar in yourself.’
‘Damned shame that the excitement had to take this kind of turn. Pity they didn’t get Durkin instead!’
‘Oh, Howard! What a thing to say! You must forgive my husband, Mr Wright! He practises fire-eating in front of the bathroom mirror every morning. But it doesn’t really come naturally to him.——Sandwiches? Egg and cress, smoked salmon, pâté——’
‘The trouble is,’ Lesueur said, ‘I’m still not myself about this. I was fond of Edward Barson. Doesn’t seem the right thing to say, but I did make him what he was, you know. I’d nurtured that boy. Right from his coming out of the army, I’d taken him under my wing. You could see it in him, you know——energy, integrity, loyalty. And what a way he had to go still, what a mark he’d have made. He wouldn’t have stopped at Fellaby, you know. Just another three years, I told him, only last week, and they’d have been pleading with him to go to Westminster.’
The sandwiches were tiny, crustless, triangular. Wright seemed to have eaten three of them whilst his hosts were still nibbling at their first.
‘Character!’ Lesueur said. ‘That’s what he had. It doesn’t come all too often, these days. And he had to be cut down by some little yobbo who ought to have been birched on the day of his birth. I don’t know why you people haven’t slapped the manacles on him and signed the whole thing off. But then, you’ve got this red herring of a pip-squeak in the sloppy hat, haven’t you?’
Wright tried to imitate Kenworthy’s gentler tones.
‘There’s no conclusive evidence against Stanway,’ he said, ‘and we can’t discount the activities of this other figure.’
‘Toasted tea-cake, Mr Wright——or scone?’
‘Give him both!’ Lesueur thundered. ‘Can’t you see the man has an appetite?’
Wright was sorry to be diverted from the pâté sandwiches, which he found supremely palatable. He opted for the tea-cake.
‘This is one of the things I’m afraid I have to ask you, sir. Did he come here?’
‘Did who come here?’
‘This mysterious character in the felt hat?’
‘What in thunder would he want to come here for?’
‘Perhaps I ought not to tell you this, sir——but the papers will have it before long. We have reason to believe that this visitor was a private detective hired to gain information about alderman Barson.’
‘Some socialist stunt, I don’t doubt. Looking for a smear-story. And if they couldn’t find one, they’d invent one. Well——he didn’t come here. If he had, I’d have booted his arse from here to the duck-pond.’
‘Howard!’
‘You didn’t see anything of this crawler, did you?’
‘No. Certainly he didn’t call when I was in. I can ask the servants. Have some jam, Mr Wright?’
‘What sort of thing would he want to be pinning on to Barson, anyway?’
‘Oh, I don’t know, sir. The alderman’s views didn’t appeal to all shades of opinion.’
‘You’re not one of these damned reds, are you, sergeant?’
‘No, sir. I try not to be anything. But as an impartial observer, there are one or two aspects of alderman Barson’s career that interest me.’
‘Such as?’
‘Well, sir——I don’t know how best to express this——one wouldn’t perhaps have looked on him as conventional material for preferment in your party, would one?’
‘Wouldn’t one?’
Lesueur’s slight stress on the pronoun was scornful.
‘Wouldn’t one? Because he struggled up out of the slums, you mean? Young man——your brain is constipated with theory, and you’ve sat on the fence so long that you’re in danger of bisecting yourself. You talk ideas, but I don’t think you’ve any idea of facts. Somebody’s told you that Barson came from the slums. But does that really mean anything to you? Do you really know what those slums were like? Do you know that they’d only one outside tap for eight houses in Kenilworth Street? That they’d an outside lavatory that was frozen solid for two months of every year? Have you ever lived in a Fellaby slum, Wright?’
‘Two kinds of cake,’ Lady Lesueur said.
Wright chose a light looking sponge, his fingers sinking into thick cream as he tried to lift a slice from the plate.
‘Do you know that Barson won a scholarship to the local grammar school, but his father wouldn’t let him take it? In case he should give himself airs? Do you wonder that he grew up with some strong opinions? That he couldn’t tolerate those who’d had a better chance than he had, but hadn’t taken advantage of it?——Oh, I know Edward Barson was impulsive. He spoke sometimes and thought afterwards. There were times when he had us all s
itting on the edge of our seats, wondering what was coming next. But do you think we wanted that brain, that oratory, that fearlessness, to go over to the other side? Do you know that Kenilworth Street now returns a conservative councillor? And can you guess whom we have to thank for that? Don’t you think there’s room in my party for a few red-blooded progressives who still haven’t turned their backs on the establishment? Don’t you know that that’s where the floating vote is floating to now, because there aren’t a few Barsons on the Treasury benches?’
‘I shall be personally offended, Mr Wright, if you don’t try this other cake as well. I baked it myself. This is none of your packet mixtures.’
‘But when you made him an alderman——’ Wright began, as persuasively as he could.
‘I didn’t make him an alderman. I’m not a Fellaby Borough councillor. I was made mayor by invitation in coronation year——but that’s a constitutional prerogative of the corporation. I’m chairman of the divisional association. I see fair play whilst others fight out the policy decisions. But I play no active part in politics. It was the Fellaby borough councillors who made Barson an alderman.’
‘And when they did, sir——did they not pass over several others who, by virtue of seniority——’
‘The decision was unanimous. By the whole party caucus. May I also add, it was spontaneous? I cannot remember that they even consulted me. And is there so much harm in demonstrating that ours can be a young man’s party?’
‘Another cup of tea, Mr Wright?’
Lesueur brought a silver cigarette-box from an occasional table.
‘Have a cancer-stick!’
‘I’m afraid that one bit of unpleasantness has gone so far that we can’t stop it, sir.’
‘Oh?’
Wright was speaking closely to the brief which Kenworthy had given him at the breakfast table. He gave an unembroidered account of the affair of Barson’s garden-path, omitting any reference to Gill or Warren. Lesueur was very angry.
‘You people just can’t help stirring things up, can you?’
‘Poor Mrs Barson!’ Lady Lesueur said. ‘Naturally, you aren’t letting it go any further.’
‘It’s out of our hands.’
‘That’s what you always say. I’ll have a word with Grayling about it.’
‘It’s beyond superintendent Grayling’s control, sir. The papers will have to go to the Director of Public Prosecutions. The town clerk——’
‘Blast the town clerk! What are you aiming to do——put a corpse in the dock?’
‘It isn’t a question of that, sir. There’s a charge of falsifying public accounts.’
‘By whom?’
‘By an employee of the borough——a quantity surveyor——’
‘Well——there are ways and means of covering that, surely? Somebody’s made a mistake, a clerical error. How much was involved? Fifty quid at the most? Sack the man, kick him upstairs, get him a better job. Soon fix him.’
Wright smiled. He wondered whether Kenworthy would have permitted himself a moment’s quiet provocation.
‘Sounds remarkably like compounding a felony,’ he said softly.
‘You can call it what you like, sergeant. You fellows have a high-sounding phrase for everything. Well, you go ahead, do your worst! I shall personally see to it that your efforts are stopped at source. And in doing so, I shall not be perverting the course of justice——I shall be cultivating it. I am not going to stand by and see that young man’s name besmirched.’
Lady Lesueur began to gather up empty plates and cups, as if the tap of her hospitality had been turned off.
‘If I could broach just one more topic, sir.’
Wright was beginning inwardly to curse Kenworthy’s brief. He did not believe that even the superintendent would continue to press his luck in the face of Lesueur’s last outburst. There were, it was obvious, several reasons why Lesueur ought not to be antagonised at as early a stage as this. Nevertheless, Wright pursued his course.
‘Been wallowing in some other cess-pool, have you, sergeant?’
‘No, sir. And I apologise for putting these questions to you. But we are here to investigate a murder——’
‘One would hardly think it. It would seem that the main object of the exercise is to denigrate a murdered man.’
‘Not at all, sir. The man who killed him must have been his enemy. We have to find out who his enemies were, and to do that we have to find out as much as we can about his character and habits.’
‘If you follow that to its natural conclusion, you’ll go out immediately and arrest the leader of the opposition on Fellaby Council.’
‘Not necessarily, sir. There are more facets to a man’s personality than his politics. His work, for example.’
‘I don’t think you’ll find anything exceptional in Barson’s work.’
‘And his domestic circumstances?’
‘What have they to do with it?’
‘I’m not saying they have anything to do with it. It’s just——well——I think we’re all agreed that Barson was not an easy character. You said yourself, just now, he was impulsive. I’ve met his wife——his widow——and she seemed a pleasant, courageous, uncomplicated soul———’
‘Sergeant——this is too much! By God, this is too much!’
‘Outrageous!’ Lady Lesueur said.
‘We have to consider every possibility. Even a negative response might be informative.’
‘I refuse to discuss the matter a moment longer. I shall speak to the Chief Constable and make sure that I am not importuned again except by a responsible officer. And I don’t care if the Chief Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police were to come up here himself: I would refuse to try to wring evidence out of a dead man’s home life. I think this is perfectly monstrous!’
‘I’m sorry, sir, I——’
‘Sorry be damned! You’re sorry you’re going to get no empty gossip out of me, that’s all you’re sorry about. And now you must excuse me, sergeant. I have work to do.’
Wright negotiated the spiral stairs with stumbling feet, the treads too narrow for the soles of his shoes, his heels catching in the uneven crevices.
He walked disconsolately along the long drive back to the village, whose dour stone houses huddled together under skeletal trees. Half way along he stepped sideways to make way for a battered red shooting-brake. Colonel Hawley’s lips smiled up from under his brisk, military moustache.
‘You’re looking down in the mouth, sergeant. Did he give you a rough time?’
Wright screwed up his face, and could not think of a safe immediate answer.
‘If you’ve just broken the news to him that was whispered to me in the town hall ten minutes ago, I’m not surprised. Bloody bad show all round, isn’t it?’
‘I must say, I’m not enjoying this case.’
‘You’re not going to enjoy walking back to Fellaby, either, are you?’
‘I’ll wait for the bus.’
‘No more today. Tuesdays and Saturdays only. You ought to read the small print at the foot of the time-table, sergeant.’
Hawley swept aside a pile of countryman’s paraphernalia——a bundle of drain-cleaning rods and field glasses in a leather case——from the passenger seat, and reversed, with his back wheels over the rough grass.
‘Hop in!’
They swept over the stone bridge that crossed the village’s shallow torrent. Hawley lit a cheroot.
‘So his Nibs is all for letting sleeping garden-paths lie, is he?’
Wright decided that it was worth the risk of tackling the main line.
‘He thinks all that is unnecessary muck-raking,’ he said, ‘but that’s not what upset him.’
‘Oh?’
‘I tried to get a line on Barson’s private life. He didn’t like it.’
‘He wouldn’t.——But you could get a line on Barson’s private life without skewering Lesueur’s lapel. Plenty of people in Fellaby——’
; ‘Not up to now. When I bring it up, people go all coy.’
‘You must have been meeting the wrong people.’
They came into Fellaby, passing a wide street-corner that had been cleared for development and then apparently forgotten, for dried regiments of last year’s rose-bay willow-herb guarded the rubble, and against the outside walls of houses that had escaped the bulldozers, weathered laminations of wall-paper spread in dampened patches beside fire-places open to the winds.
‘Perhaps you’d be one of the right people,’ Wright ventured.
Hawley laughed, curtly and without humour.
‘Oh, leave me out of it, sergeant, if you don’t mind.——Oh, I’d help you, if I thought it would do you a ha’ porth of good. And if you haven’t got what you want in twenty-four hours, come and see me again. But don’t involve me if you can help it. After all, I am the conservative agent——and Lesueur is my bread and butter.’
Wright looked sideways through the window at the shop-fronts of Fellaby High Street. Kenworthy would make a better job of it than this——
‘And don’t worry about Lesueur,’ the colonel said. ‘He’ll come round. He always does. His bark’s much worse than his bite. I’ll have a quiet word with him.’
He dropped Wright at the Report Centre. There was a telephone message from Scotland Yard. Heather had reported that Fischer of Siebenhausen was in gaol in Hamburg, halfway through ten years for receiving.
Wright returned to the hotel and set his alarm-clock to give himself an hour and a half’s sleep.
Chapter Eleven
Kenworthy was still not back. Wright debated with himself whether he ought to go and take a back seat at the settlement between the warring gangs. Strictly speaking, it was none of his business. Grayling was conducting the operation himself. He would not want the battlefield cluttered up with gratuitous spectators, and the score would be chalked up in the Congregational Sunday School as soon as it was known.
Nevertheless, as eight o’clock approached, Wright could not resist the temptation. His rest had left him, if anything, feeling worse than before, with the muscles of his neck stiff and every inch of his body calling out for cool pillow and sheets. But he made his way along the High Street, and opposite the Saracen’s Head found the news-vendor in his favourite doorway.
Death of an Alderman Page 9
