“You are old friends, he tells me.”
“He has been our doctor since we came to live here, that’s all.”
“You weren’t friends during your stage days, Lady Skollick?”
“No. Has someone told you we were?”
“I must be mistaken. He told me he was interested in opera and greatly admired your singing when he was in practice in London years ago.”
“Did he? I never met him there. He’s never mentioned his musical tastes whilst visiting us here. He and my husband were always very preoccupied with sport and particularly with fishing and shooting. I’m pleased to know I once gave him pleasure before I knew him personally.”
She appeared to be quite natural about it all. Either she or Pakeman was a liar, and what it was all about Littlejohn could not think.
“He has some of your recordings. One of your singing Tosti’s Avril.”
“Has he, indeed! I’m flattered. Wait, though. How he got it, I can’t say. It has been out of circulation a long time.”
She went to the record cabinet in the corner and searched about in it.
“It’s gone. I was playing it the night before my husband died. In fact, I left it on the turntable.”
It struck Littlejohn that she might be the type who would listen appreciatively to her own recordings. And perhaps to those of nobody else.
She raised the lid of the radiogram.
“He must have taken it. Let’s say borrowed it, when he called. A piece of impertinence.”
There was nothing more to say. Lady Skollick mentioned that her lunch was growing cold. Littlejohn apologized and they said good-bye.
On the way back, a countryman lounging at his garden gate in his Sunday best raised a friendly hand and stopped them.
“I thought you’d like to know, master, that we think Casement’s great dog, Moddey Mooar’s about the curraghs. One or two heard howling in the night and as the little dog’s tied up and friendly now at P.C. Killip’s, it looks as if it’s the other, leek. I wouldn’ like to meet that fellah in the dark, ‘specially since his boss was shot. If it’s true what they say, that it’s murder, then whoever done it had better look out.”
13
THE HOUSE IN THE CURRAGH
OLD JUAN’S NINETIETH birthday party went very well. There were about fifty specially invited guests, including his family from America, but it had been widely advertised that anyone else who cared to call would be welcome.
The little school at The Cronk was filled to the doors.
Some were even compelled to eat and drink in the road, illuminated by the lights from the windows. Barricaded by a circle of old friends, Juan Kilbeg held court for about an hour and then he felt tired. The whole affair ended formally about half-past nine with the departure of the old man to bed. He expressed himself as not being very well pleased with the present generation, compared them unfavourably with the young men of his own youth, said he was glad he would soon die and join his long-gone friends in heaven, and insisted on the assembly singing his favourite hymn, A Day’s March Nearer Home, before he left.
Littlejohn, Knell and the Venerable Archdeacon drove to The Cronk after evening service at Grenaby, enjoyed a hearty meal, and then Old Juan and the Rev. Caesar Kinrade talked Manx for half an hour, and Juan mentioned that he had passed on the news about Casement’s letter to the Archdeacon. Meanwhile, Wash. Kilbeg, a sporting member of the American line, entertained such as were interested on the finer points of baseball. Standish, a politician, explained the constitution of the United States to two travelling students who, passing by heavy-laden with rucksacks, had called in for a free meal. Elmer and Wilbur, the twins, meanwhile, had taken a few of the youthful element into a small adjoining room and were initiating them into the art of crap-shooting, a game which the thrifty Manxmen played for matches, greatly to the disgust of their instructors.
Old Juan decided it was time to go to bed just after J. Hoover Kilbeg and his wife, both of them eminent musicians and teachers in their home town, began to play a Beethoven sonata for horn and piano, which they had been practising in honour of the old man.
After Juan Kilbeg had left them, the guests gathered round for an hour’s talk about old times and Manx news, including the Archdeacon who had been buttonholed by another Manx-speaking old gentleman who monopolized him for half an hour. Littlejohn slipped out into the open air, lit his pipe, and took a stroll for a breath of cool breeze from the sea. Knell, whom he left behind, had met a long lost second-cousin, who was in the process of talking him to death.
Littlejohn started off down the road which led to the curraghs. By this time, he thought he knew it well. He turned to the right and he found himself plunged at once into pitch darkness. The sudden change from the brightly lit schoolroom to the night around him made him pull up short. Above his head, a vault of branches and shadows obscured the stars; ahead blackness. There was a bitter tang of unknown plants on the air which mingled with the familiar smell of the marshes.
Then, suddenly, he was in the open again. The trees thinned out, he could see the stars overhead, and, in the distance, the lights of cottages dotted across the curraghs. He began to find his bearings and, as he paused to identify the places he had grown to know, an idea abruptly entered his mind to visit by night the scene of the crime and the strange events which followed it. The road he was following led straight past Mylecharaine school, the church, and then on, by a narrow path to the vicarage.
All the way to the church, about a mile away, Littlejohn met nobody. Old William Fayle’s chapel was in darkness, the cottages scattered round the church at Mylecharaine were snugly closed and lights showed behind drawn curtains and blinds. Now and then, there were sounds of radio music or voices. The church was in darkness, too.
There were two lanes which led to the rectory. One through the churchyard, the ‘parson’s path’, the other along the church wall and through the front gate. Littlejohn took the latter way and found himself unable to enter as the gate was overgrown with weeds and ivy. Furthermore, the hedge which enclosed the house had recently been re-enforced by wire-netting by a farmer whose cattle had only recently eaten half of it away. Through the clumps of neglected bushes which almost entirely hid the vicarage from where he was standing, Littlejohn could see a light burning in the front room.
He remained motionless, his eyes fixed on the illuminated window. As he did so, two figures materialized from within, stood for a minute in full view and then, engaged in earnest conversation, disappeared. They were the Rev. Sullivan Lee and Dr. Pakeman.
The Superintendent fumbled his way along the dilapidated hedge, seeking a way to the front door, and finally found the remnants of an old wall, topped by what felt to be ivy. He pulled himself up, threw his leg over, slipped down the other side, and was immediately above his ankles in mud. Risking making his presence obvious, he took out his torch and cast a pencil of light about his feet. He had just missed plunging into the black pool in an even darker corner of the garden and was now involved in part of its muddy bank.
The unkempt garden, overrun by bramble bushes and holly, had a haunted feel and a temperature several degrees below the surrounding countryside which chilled Littlejohn to the marrow. Dry twigs crackled underfoot as he leapt from the mud to drier land. The high tops of the surrounding trees must have held colonies of rooks, which he heard heavily flapping their wings, but not daring to take flight in the night or even to cry out. Ahead lay the sad house, which no amount of decoration, warmth, human habitation or change of season had ever succeeded in cheering. Amid its barren garden and the misty curraghs it reared itself like a doomed place.
The house was in full view and so unexpectedly near, that he had to draw back behind the bushes as he heard footsteps and voices in the hall behind the door. His foot caught a forgotten rake which lay in the wet grass and the handle rose and hit him on the chest. He cautiously thrust it beneath a stunted tree in case he encountered it again.
What a place! L
ittlejohn had no idea of the direction of The Cronk, where, less than an hour ago, he had been sitting, half-asleep, listening to the gentle drone of gossiping voices. Here, as soon as one took a step from the chartered paths, the twists, zig-zags and doubling back and forth of the hidden tracks led one into a complete labyrinth.
He took a few cautious steps and found himself close to the lighted window. The weather was fine, but water fell drop by drop from some spout or gutter overhead splattering his hat and coat. Although there appeared to be no wind to speak of, the trees overhead sighed gently.
Suddenly the knob of the front door was turned and in the dim light of the hall, Littlejohn could make out the forms of the two men again.
“Well, good-night, Mr. Lee. Let me know if anything turns up.”
The doctor was buttoning his raincoat as he spoke.
“I will do that, doctor. I had him in the shed round the corner and when he vanished, I thought I’d better tell you. It may be dangerous.”
“Quite right. You were lucky to come upon him the way you did. Well, good-night. My car’s under the church wall by the main gate.”
He made off in the dark across the parson’s path and the vicar closed the door. Littlejohn watched him return to the lighted room, where he at once began sorting books which lay in piles on the worn linoleum of the floor. He still looked eager to get away and was merely waiting for police permission to catch the next boat to the mainland.
Gingerly Littlejohn felt his way round the house, now and then flashing a faint glimmer of his torch to guide him. There was a path, knee-deep in strong weeds, leading all the way and skirting this at the end of the front wall were two or three ramshackle wooden sheds, the rotten smell of which filled the air and told of their condition in spite of the pitch darkness. Rats scuttered about and, overhead, the rooks still flapped their nervous wings and seemed to follow every silent footstep beneath.
A large shed which might once have held a small car or a gig. The door was closed, but, when he shone his torch on the catch, he found that the hasp, which had held a locked chain, had been torn from its position in the rotten wood. Littlejohn opened the door and swept his light around. A rat scuttered through a hole in the timber and disappeared. There was a hole cut at the bottom of the door to admit a cat. A pity none was about at present to deal with the rats.
The place was full of dust, cobwebs, and other rubbish.
Old iron, decrepit garden tools, plant pots, battered boxes and tins. The floor however was interesting. An old enamel dish, half full of water; another of heavy earthenware which had probably held food and been licked clean by rats. Scattered here and there lumps of dog excrement.
The clues among the dust, the breaking open of the door by sheer bodily weight, the conversation between Lee and Pakeman could only mean one thing. Casement’s Great Dog, Moddey Mooar, had probably been held prisoner there until he’d decided he’d had enough, and had forced his way out.
And then he noticed an astonishing thing. Half-way between the hole through which the rat had scrambled and the empty food dish lay another large rat. At first he thought it was dead, but a closer look revealed that it was unconscious. It lay there amazingly and peacefully asleep. Littlejohn frowned, and touched it. It was warm and he could feel its breathing and heartbeats.
Still frowning, he slowly left the shed, and closed the door and made for the front of the house again. The mud around his trousers-bottoms was growing hard and uncomfortable and the damp miasma surrounding the place was giving him a chill. He wondered why he’d ever set about this wild goose chase.
Littlejohn’s knock on the front door of the vicarage sounded hollow through the silent, almost empty house. From where he was standing, with a good view through the adjacent lighted window, Littlejohn could see Lee almost leap in the air when his knock was heard. A pause. Lee peeped through the window into the dark night. Then he decided he’d better answer the door. His head peered out after he had rattled the bolts and chains which he had made secure when Pakeman left. He saw Littlejohn and, without even a word, stood aside to let him enter, as though finding it futile to resist. He stared timidly at the Superintendent as he entered the hall.
It was the same as when P.C. Killip had called on the eventful night of Skollick’s death. A paraffin lamp smoked on a chair in the hall. Dark shadows hung like cloaks all-round the periphery of the room. Somewhere in the building a tap was running with an eerie wailing sound; otherwise, as the two men faced each other there was silence.
As Lee made no show of inviting him in, Littlejohn quietly strolled into the lighted room. The illumination came from another paraffin lamp, this time made of brass and with a broken mantle, mounted on a brass stand. It looked like a candidate for another jumble-sale. Lee followed him hesitantly, like a boy about to be chastised and wasting time to defer the punishment.
“Why didn’t you tell us that you’d been harbouring Casement’s dog here, Mr. Lee?”
Lee’s mouth opened, and yet he did not speak. He stood as though he expected Littlejohn to strike him any minute. “How did you capture it, in the first place?”
Lee approached with hesitant steps, his face tightening as he tried to assume a defiant air.
“He just came here and I fed him. He was wild and bewildered. He was in the garden drinking at the pool.”
“You threw food in the shed and then locked him in?”
“Yes.”
“Why didn’t you inform the police?”
“I never thought of it. I have only just returned to the vicarage, as you know, and my mind is confused. I am preparing to leave as soon as the police give permission.”
“Yet, you let Dr. Pakeman know?”
“He asked me to do so, if I saw the animal about.”
“When did he ask you?”
“He called soon after I returned from prison, told me the dog was abroad and dangerous, and said if I saw it, I ought to let him know. He has told everyone on the curraghs, so I was not alone in the affair.”
“What was he doing here to-night?”
“The dog came last night. I telephoned first thing this morning to the doctor’s home, but he was out. He has just been to see me in answer to my message. Only to find that the dog had escaped.”
Lee was nervously fumbling with a piece of knotted string which had lain on the floor. His fingers trembled so violently that he could not untie it. Littlejohn gently took it from him, untied the two knots, and then placed it on the table.
The candle guttered in front of the little shrine to Lee’s wife. A long sliver of grease had formed down one side through the draught and stood like a minor support for the main column of wax. The room still stank of soot, although Lee had apparently cleaned away all traces of the fall down the chimney.
“Why are you giving up the parish and entering a monastery, sir?”
The question was so unexpected and irrelevant, that Lee paused before answering, as though wondering if it really had been asked.
“I don’t know.”
“Please, Mr. Lee, don’t try to mislead me any more. You have been a very well-liked priest in this small community and you have done good work. Then, suddenly, you throw the whole business up and cannot pack quickly enough and get away. You wish to cut yourself off from the world.”
“I have decided to enter the Roman church. I cannot, therefore, stay here.”
“Is it not because of your spell in prison? Your parishioners think too much of you to hold that against you now you have been found innocent. They’ll even think all the more of you for your quixotic effort to shield someone else.”
Lee blinked and his face reddened.
“Mr. Lee, I beg of you, tell me the whole business, the truth about your own share in the death of Sir Martin. I don’t suggest that you had anything to do with the murder; your innocence there has been proved. But you may get into very serious trouble as an accessory if you aren’t careful. What are you doing meddling in this matter? This is prob
ably your last chance to help the police. If, when the arrest is made, you are again implicated, the results may be very serious for you.”
Lee’s shoulders shivered and he turned an exhausted face with closed eyes to Littlejohn, as though not caring to give him a straight look because of some guilt which might be plainly seen.
“Please leave me alone. Let me go away. I swear I had nothing to do with the crime. That is all you wanted. Please leave me in peace.”
“I’m going to talk to you as man to man, sir. I don’t blame you for what you have done. Many another man has fallen in love with a woman whom he knows can only ruin his life.”
He paused. The agonized eyes had opened and he was surprised to see them glistening with anger. Littlejohn feared the old stubborn streak was about to manifest itself again.
“I have no doubt, sir, that you have tried to be faithful to the memory of your late wife.”
With a noise like a soft wail, Lee sat at the table among the dusty books and piles of sermons, and buried his head in his arms. Dry sobs shook him and he rolled from side to side as though seeking in movement some kind of relief.
“In another half-hour, sir, I shall be a policeman again.
Our ways will part then. But at present, I am trying simply to be your friend, to release you from the load of remorse you stubbornly persist in bearing. You wish to be faithful to your wife at all costs. But you have developed a passion for someone else. You are going to run away, therefore, and enter a monastery. Very well. But, through your emotions, you have got mixed in the machinery of the law.”
Lee had fixed Littlejohn with an unwavering stare, full of hostility and distrust, as though the Superintendent were trying to trick him into another more fatal confession.
“Who has told you all this? It is not true.”
“Nobody needed to tell me, sir. Forgive me if I draw painful conclusions, but it is, I trust, for your own good. When your wife died, you, like many others who have known happiness and great love with a woman, made yourself a little shrine to her memory. Can you tell me honestly that the one there is the same as when you first erected it? Dusty, fly-blown, an old candle askew. You didn’t even remember to take it to prison with you; a place where it might be expected to comfort you most.”
Toll the Bell for Murder (An Inspector Littlejohn Mystery) Page 17
