Toll the Bell for Murder (An Inspector Littlejohn Mystery)
Page 22
Littlejohn shook his head.
“Is that likely, Herle? Why tackle young country girls when there are better fish available in the neighbourhood? Why carry a knife, thus making the affair murderous and premeditated, instead of merely hitting them hard with his fist if they resisted? It’s all too hit-or-miss and as far as the carrying of a weapon goes, highly dangerous.”
“Perhaps so. There was another funny thing about Marlene’s death. It might have nothing whatever to do with the case, but about a foot away from the body on the grass verge, there was an orange and a little further on, a swede turnip.”
“Queer clues?”
“Yes. Marlene was on her way to a social in connection with decorating the church with fruit, vegetables and flowers for the following Sunday. The crime was committed on Thursday. She hadn’t any offerings with her because her father had taken her heavy basket of stuff down to the school earlier in the evening. It contained neither swedes nor oranges. Where did the two beside the body come from? Or was it pure coincidence?”
“I can’t say, but we’ll remember it. And that’s all?”
“Yes. We’ve questioned everybody we could about the movements of the two girls and Bracknell prior to the murders. A complete blank. No fingerprints. No reasonable motives. The local people are sure there’s a maniac hiding in the woods, and the newspapers, I must say, have done nothing to allay their fears. They’ve had a field-day and stirred-up a perfect frenzy of terror. In Carleton Unthank, the men have formed a squad of vigilantes and no women go abroad at night without escorts. In the daytime, the children have guards to and from school. The police have come in for torrents of letters, suggesting things and showering abuse. The whole area is crawling with guards and pickets from the former special constables, the British Legion, and the Oddfellows. … So, the murderer avoids them and goes to a forsaken spot like Freake’s Folly and kills the tenant there …”
“Freake’s Folly?”
“It was built about 1800 for the father of one of the ladies of Huncote Manor, a mile or so out of town. His name was Freake and he went a bit queer, to put it mildly. A sort of alchemist, or something. Contemporary prints show it was a kind of sham castle with a tower which still remains. He studied the stars from the top of it.”
“Is it a farm, now?”
“Yes and no. It has thirty acres with it. It was carved out of the home farm of Huncote Manor. It’s approached from the main Fenny Carleton-Leicester highway by a side-road called Dan’s Lane. Old Freake’s name was Daniel. When Dan’s Lane ends, there begins a small forest of oaks and beeches. The house is in the middle of these in a clearing and from a distance seems totally buried in them. The forest ends and about twenty acres more of cleared land runs parallel with the boundary of Home Farm. The Folly is about half a mile across the field to the home farmhouse.”
“Has it been occupied ever since it was built?”
“No. It stood empty, I gather, for a long time after the death of old Freake. Then, one or two good-for-nothings of the Huncote family lived there … Remittance men, you might call them. In its day, it was a fine house. Panelled beautifully, they say. But all the good stuff of the interior was rifled in the early part of the century, when it was deserted till 1914; then the War Office used it for storage. There was talk of pulling it down or felling the timber, but nothing came of it. Then, about 1954, Bracknell took it over. It still belonged to a member of the family at the manor who emigrated to Australia. He came back on a visit and decided to stay, so settled-in at Freake’s Folly, which he seemed to fancy.”
“Why did they never join the land to the home farm? It would have paid better than leave it derelict, wouldn’t it?”
“No farmer would want that adding to his fields. It’s poor, barren and swampy. Bracknell did very little with it, except chase off trespassers. He even forbade the keeper and agent from the hall to come near. The hall is now let to the county as an old-folk’s home. He was a recluse and a bit of a mystery. I suggest we go down to the Folly and see for ourselves. You’ll find it an ideal setting for a murder.”
“So, we’ve really got to start from scratch?”
“Yes, sir. I’m sorry. That’s why the Chief Constable thought it better to enlist your help. You might bring a fresh slant and new techniques on a case like this. We’ve worked hard with no results. You can imagine what checking-up for miles around on sales of oranges and swede turnips must have been like! And all no good. Everybody seemed to have appetites for and be buying-in swedes and oranges about that time.”
“We’ll do our best. Do you believe in a maniac who suddenly wandered in the district and murdered for the sake of it?”
“No, sir. I don’t.”
Herle met Littlejohn’s look with a straight clear stare.
“I don’t. It’s someone who in his relations with everybody else except his victims, behaves just like you and I. He lives in these parts and it might be anybody. It might even be me!”
There was a small pleasant hotel, the Huncote Arms, in Carleton Unthank, run by a sloppy little man called Russell, who had hair like a shaving brush and a front tooth missing.
“The pair of you are very welcome,” he told Cromwell, who made arrangements for the rooms. “It’s time this case was settled and the murderer hung. We’ve sold a barrel of beer less every week since this ’orrible business started. People just won’t come out after dark. One of the reporters of a London daily called it Unthank, the Town of Fearful Nights. My missus is scared to death, too. She’s gone home to her mother at Upton-on-Severn … If things go on like this, we’ll have to put up our shutters …”
“Don’t do it whilst we’re here, will you?”
The place was spotlessly clean, the beds were comfortable, and Mr. Russell said he’d been a chef at a large London hotel until he decided to take it easy. A buxom, healthy, young blonde, called Bertha, showed them their rooms and generally seemed to run the business whilst Russell did all the talking. Cromwell wondered whether the murderer or Bertha had been the cause of Mrs. Russell’s flight to the Severn.
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George Bellairs was the pseudonym of Harold Blundell (1902-1985). He was, by day, a Manchester bank manager with close connections to the University of Manchester. He is often referred to as the English Simenon, as his detective stories combine wicked crimes and classic police procedurals, set in small British communities.
He was born in Lancashire and married Gladys Mabel Roberts in 1930. He was a Francophile which explains why many of his titles took place in France. Bellairs travelled there many times, and often wrote articles for English newspapers and magazines, with news and views from France.
After retiring from business, he moved with Gladys to Colby on the Isle of Man, where they had many friends and family. Some of his detective novels are set on the Isle of Man and his surviving notebooks attest to a keen interest in the history, geography and folklore of the island. In 1941 he wrote his first mystery story during spare moments at his air raid warden’s post. Throughout the 1950s he contributed a regular column to the Manchester Guardian under the pseudonym George Bellairs, and worked as a freelance writer for other newspapers both local and national.
Blundell’s first mystery, Littlejohn on Leave (1941) introduced his series detective, Detective Inspector Thomas Littlejohn. His books are strong in characters and small communities – set in the 1940s to ‘70s. The books have strong plots, and are full of scandal and intrig
ue. His series character started as Inspector and later became Superintendent Thomas Littlejohn. Littlejohn, reminiscent of Inspector Maigret, is injected with humour, intelligence and compassion.
He died on the Isle of Man in April 1982 just before his eightieth birthday after a protracted illness.
If you’d like to hear more from George Bellairs and other classic crime writers, follow @CrimeClassics on Twitter or connect with them on Facebook.
ALSO BY GEORGE BELLAIRS
The Case of the Famished Parson
The Case of the Demented Spiv
Corpses in Enderby
Death in High Provence
Death Sends for the Doctor
Murder Makes Mistakes
Bones in the Wilderness
Toll the Bell for Murder
Death in the Fearful Night
Death in the Wasteland
Death of a Shadow
Intruder in the Dark
Death in Desolation
The Night They Killed Joss Varran
This edition published in 2016 by Ipso Books
Ipso Books is a division of Peters Fraser + Dunlop Ltd
Drury House, 34-43 Russell Street, London WC2B 5HA
Copyright © George Bellairs, 1959
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You may not copy, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (including without limitation electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, printing, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
CONTENTS
1Something Wrong in the Curragh
2The Night the Bell Tolled
3The Silent Man
4The House at Tantaloo
5A Woman on Edge
6Encounter in the Curragh
7Two Women
8The Man who lost his Faith
9The Folly of Sullivan Lee
10The Watchers at Midnight
11Repeat Performance
12Ninety Years Old
13The House in the Curragh
14Monday Morning
15The Horror at Narradale