Groaning Spinney

by Gladys Mitchell

  Miss Wootton had dried his clothes but nothing was scorched. He did not know how she had managed to dry them in the time, and said as much. On impulse, he suddenly added:

  ‘I say, Miss Wootton, I know you can keep your mouth shut. Who, in the village, is cranky enough to write me an immoral sort of letter?’

  ‘That Mrs. La-di-dah that does for Mr. Fullalove,’ Miss Wootton promptly replied. ‘Nobody of these parts would do it.’

  Jonathan thought this an unreasonable and prejudiced statement, so he nodded non-committally and started on his way home. Just as he began to mount the lane which led to the house he met the Fullaloves’ gardener, a fellow named Anstey.

  ‘The governor’s bust his leg, sir,’ said Anstey, ‘and wondered whether you could go on up and see to him. I had a message. I wasn’t to go up there myself. I was to come straight along here. Note pushed under my door.’

  ‘All right,’ said Jonathan. ‘What’s the other Mr. Fullalove doing?—Mr. Bill?’

  ‘Called away to Gloucester, sir, or so the governor said yesterday. Don’t see how he’s going to get through. Here’s the key, sir. The governor can’t get to the door, so ’e says in the note. His leg must be pretty bad, I reckon. Anyway, I’m forbid to do aught except fetch you along.’

  ‘Where’s Mrs. Dalby Whittier? Can’t she let me in?’

  ‘Gone to London for Christmas, sir, and the governor told me he’d wrote and told her particular she wasn’t to try and come back in all this snow.’

  ‘Right. Well, go on up to my house and tell them I’ll get back as soon as I can. Then you’d better come up to Fullaloves’ and help me.’

  He opened the note and frowned at it. It was typewritten and ended in a couple of typewritten initials. Now had Jonathan not known that Tiny Fullalove did not possess a typewriter, and had he not received the scurrilous anonymous note about Deborah, and had Tiny Fullalove not been mentioned in it, he might have acted very differently from the way in which he did act. He turned left up the hill at first to go to the Fullaloves’ bungalow, but, on a second thought, he climbed the fence which bordered Groaning Spinney and made his way back among the trees to his own house. He thought that he could at least test the information he had received. He did not propose to be hoaxed into taking the long, uphill walk through the deep snow to the bungalow if this should not be necessary. In other words he decided to telephone Tiny before he took any further steps.

  There was not as much snow on the ground within the wood as he had expected, but there were sudden swift falls from the overloaded branches. Jonathan hurried as much as he could. As he passed the bank where the badgers were known to have their holes, he noticed that the wooden platform, built by Obury and Bill Fullalove in the summer as a station from which to photograph the animals by flashlight, was now so deep in snow that he wondered whether it would collapse before the thaw came. It was built in the fork of a tree, about eight feet up, and the ground beneath was pitted with tiny holes, as though the thaw had already set in. He paid little attention, however, for he was soon struggling up to the thighs in the drift at the foot of the bank.

  ‘You’ve been quick,’ said Deborah, when Jonathan walked in. ‘Anstey said you were going to see Tiny.’

  Jonathan went to the telephone. To his annoyance, he could not get through to the Fullaloves’ bungalow.

  ‘Damn!’ he said, giving it up. ‘I’ll have to go up there, after all. I still think the whole thing’s a hoax, and I suspect our anonymous friend. Still, it won’t do to chance things if the fellow has broken his leg.’

  ‘Well, have something to eat first,’ said Deborah. ‘It won’t be dark for another hour and a half. You can stay the night at the bungalow. Please don’t try to come back.’

  ‘We’ll see,’ said Jonathan. ‘I’d better not stop now, though. See you later, I hope.’ He picked up his stick and set off.

  It was a brute of a walk. The snow had blotted out most of the landmarks. He climbed up through the wood without much difficulty, but, once he had to cross the open fields, there was nothing to go by but the general contour of the land. As he ploughed onwards, the countryside, lacking the colours and true shapes of the trees and hedges, made him feel like a man trying to pick an unknown track across a desert.

  He climbed over the snow-laden ghost-gate, and when at last he reached the bungalow he produced the key and went in. The first thing he noticed was that the telephone was off its hook.

  There was no sign of anyone in the place. Jonathan had been highly suspicious about the typed and initialled letter which had purported to come from Fullalove, and now he felt perfectly certain that it was a hoax. It was manifestly absurd to suppose that a man with a damaged (possibly a broken) leg, should have been able to sit down at a typewriter and then go out again. He was certain by this time that the anonymous letter-writer had heard that the Fullaloves were going to be away from home, and, for some reason unknown, had brought him out on a fool’s errand. This looked as though the village pest, whoever it was, had decided to make a dead set at him. He wondered who, in the village, possessed a typewriter, and who, in the village, hated him. There was, too, the question of the door-key. That had come from Anstey, it was true, but it had been enclosed in the envelope with the note. He wondered whether the writer had obtained possession of it by theft or by accident, or whether Tiny Fullalove had really sent it. It was all very puzzling and unsatisfactory.

  Meanwhile, where was Tiny? And, equally, where was Bill? And, equally, where were the dogs and cats? Why could not Tiny’s messenger—supposing that the note was genuine—have telephoned the manor house instead of pushing the note under Anstey’s door? Nothing, so far, made any sense at all. Not knowing what else to do, Jonathan hung about for another half-hour. Then he locked up the bungalow and set out for home.

  Hardly had he started, however, when he changed his mind. He would go first to Anstey’s cottage and find out what he could about the typewritten note.

  4. The Ghost faces East

  *

  ‘Get up! get up! thou leaden man!’

  Thomas Campion

  * * *

  THIN, ANXIOUS-LOOKING MRS. ANSTEY opened the door. Her information was very meagre. The note had been put under the door, and with it was a covering letter, also in typescript—she produced it—ordering Anstey to go to Jonathan’s house, and on no account to go to the bungalow.

  ‘That’s all I know, sir,’ she said. Jonathan believed her. It was obviously all that she knew. He looked at the whirling snow, which was falling fast again, and accepted the woman’s offer of a cup of boiling hot cocoa. While he was drinking it Anstey got back from the village. He could add nothing to his wife’s information.

  ‘All of a queer do; that’s what it is, sir.’

  Jonathan agreed. He put down his empty cup, pulled his cap down over his brows, and set out for home. From Anstey’s cottage, as from the Fullaloves’ bungalow, it was far shorter to go downhill through Groaning Spinney than to walk back to the village and take the lane from the stable courtyard. He spent little time weighing up the chances. He knew that the short route was the hard route, but the evening was already drawing in and he had faith enough in his own powers to decide upon chancing the snowdrifts.

  He struck off across a flattish field and kept close to the snow-covered hedge. Soon he reached the rough and pitted ground which separated the arable from the meadow and the wood. Here the going was extremely difficult, and he floundered his way down banks, and once went into a deepish hole and had to scramble out again.

  Suddenly he caught his breath. His heart hammered, and a pulse jumped just behind his eyes. He had never credited the story of the parson’s ghost, but he had been in some strange parts of the world and had seen some strange things, particularly in the West Indies and in connection with African witch-doctors. What he saw before him now, in the magic dusk of the snowdrifts, was the ghost in person, slumped over the five-barred gate in the position which village tradition assigned t
o it.

  The story of the Abominable Snowman was immediately in Jonathan’s mind. There was plenty of evidence for the existence of some monstrosity on the higher slopes of the Himalayas, and it flashed across his thoughts that here, perhaps, was something brought out of nothingness by the snow itself; a thing of fearful import; a creature, and yet not such because it was an emanation and nothing created.

  Then he pulled himself together and floundered forward to discover what it was. He knew before he reached it. It was no ghost or demon, but a man dusted over into ghostliness by this last fall of the snow; and he had not been there on Jonathan’s outward journey.

  Jonathan climbed the gate to get round to the front of the man. It was Bill Fullalove, and there was no doubt whatever that he was dead. Moreover, he was already so stiff that Jonathan could not do more than ascertain beyond doubt that there was no way to help him. He had to leave him there whilst he himself, regardless of traps such as half-buried branches, and holes in the ground now filled with the drifted snow, plunged into the wood, and, instead of taking the short track homewards, went to call on Will North and send him down for the village policeman whilst he himself went for the doctor.

  Will was reading Paradise Lost. He showed no sign of surprise at Jonathan’s news. He consented at once to go to the policeman’s cottage, and went with Jonathan directly downhill to the village. The snowdrifts seemed not to trouble him, and, however difficult the road, he seemed to find instinctively the most passable track. It did not take him more than half an hour to get them both to the house where the village policeman lived. They found him finishing his tea.

  ‘Mr. Bill Fullalove? Dead? Hanging over that there gate at the top of Groaning Spinney?’ The policeman took it all in and appeared to remain impassive. ‘That’ll mean an inquest, that will. I’d better get along up there. Do Doctor Fielding know?’

  ‘Mr. Bradley will go for him,’ Will replied. ‘He’ll be up there as soon as we are, to help take that poor fellow home.’

  ‘Be you coming along of me, then?’

  ‘Of course I’m coming along. And pretty bad going that is, all along up there, and the snow coming down the way it is.’

  ‘Well, I’m glad ee be coming, then,’ said the policeman, putting the last piece of bread into his mouth, and taking his helmet off its nail. He swallowed his half-cup of tea, put the helmet on, pulled on his uniform overcoat and his thick gloves, and put his head into the scullery.

  ‘Shan’t be long, lass.’

  ‘Mind how ee go, then. ’Tis snowin’ again.’

  ‘Ah, I’ll mind. I got Will North along of me. Mr. Bill Fullalove have died of the cold up to Groaning Spinney.’

  ‘Dear love! A strong gentleman like him! Whoever would have thought it! Got thy thick scarf I knitted for ee?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You just take and put it on, then.’

  The policeman unfastened his overcoat and picked up the scarf. Will North pulled his cap further over his eyes, re-buttoned his coat, picked up his stick, and the two of them set out through the wettish, now lightly-falling snow and made for the top of the spinney.

  Meanwhile Jonathan had gone for the doctor, and, on second thoughts, he decided to borrow the doctor’s telephone and call up the Cheltenham police. Then he tramped doggedly uphill again to where he had left the body. His elderly aunt, wearing a ski-ing suit she had borrowed from Deborah, enormous gauntlet gloves of her own, and Jonathan’s motor-cycling helmet, met him in Groaning Spinney, shone her torch to make sure it was he, and insisted on going with him.

  ‘Why?’ he enquired, as they turned further into the wood to gain a little shelter among the trees. ‘I mean, how did you know anything about it?’

  ‘Well,’ said Mrs. Bradley, taking out a second torch and switching it on, (for the evening was rapidly darkening and she was averse to taking a toss over roots of trees), ‘I was watching what I believe to have been a hare. I was standing at my bedroom window, and I saw you silhouetted against the light from Will North’s back door, and then you went off with him. As I knew you had been called previously to the Fullaloves’ bungalow I thought that you had gone to the doctor, and it occurred to me that in a surgical case I might be of some assistance.’

  ‘I see,’ said Jonathan, and, as they struggled upwards through the spinney, he told her all that he had done.

  ‘Ah, yes,’ said Mrs. Bradley. ‘I wonder why you felt bound to telephone the Cheltenham police as well as going for your own police-constable and to the doctor? Is there something more in all this than you’ve told me?’

  ‘Yes, there are one or two things a bit out of joint in the affair. To begin with, not only was there no sign of Tiny up at the bungalow, although he’s supposed to have hurt his leg, but also I can’t think who took that typewritten message to Anstey’s cottage, or even, in fact, who typed it! Then, (although I don’t know for certain, of course), I should hardly have thought that a fellow like Bill, who’s been in the Navy and done convoy duty in all weathers, and that sort of thing, would just have collapsed and died like that from the cold. But, of course, you never can tell. The toughest-seeming people can snuff out as easily as any of us, I suppose.’

  ‘But there’s something else, isn’t there?’ said Mrs. Bradley, prompting him.

  ‘Only a small point, perhaps. I expect it was Anstey’s mistake. He told me that Bill had gone to Gloucester.’

  ‘Extraordinary, in this weather, surely?’

  ‘Yes, although—oh, Lord! I do wish you hadn’t come,’ said Jonathan, floundering up to his knees. ‘It’s pretty rough going up this hill.’

  ‘Nonsense!’ said Mrs. Bradley. ‘Let me give you a helping hand!’

  Soon they came to the bank where the badgers’ earths were, and Mrs. Bradley, flashing her torches, disclosed some long foot-marks only lightly powdered with snow.

  ‘Bill’s, I suppose,’ said Jonathan. ‘He must have come out, been overcome by the cold, and managed to stagger as far as the gate before he collapsed. Let’s follow them. Here are mine, look, going along to the right. I kept under cover all I could.’

  The footmarks were soon lost, however, for the trees thinned out towards the edge of the wood, and the snow there had already covered up any footprints.

  Will North and the policeman, whose name was Tom Mayhew, converged on the haunted gate as Jonathan and Mrs. Bradley came out at the top of the spinney. Jonathan called after them, and the four struggled upwards towards the sagging, white, sack-like object which was still hanging over the gate.

  There was a hail from lower down the slope, and the doctor soon joined them. There was not, as Jonathan already knew, the very slightest doubt that Bill Fullalove was dead, and, the doctor and Mrs. Bradley having made what inspection was possible, with great difficulty the men managed to get the body to the bungalow.

  They had just contrived to get their burden indoors and on to a settee when there came an eerie sound of groaning from the next room. Jonathan guessed what it was.

  ‘Tiny!’ he said. The doctor, who was again bending over the dead man, straightened his back. The groans came again, a little louder, and the doctor, after one more glance at the corpse, went into the adjoining room. Jonathan followed him. Tiny was lying on the floor. The door from the garden was open and there were still the marks of a dragging body to be seen in the snow.

  ‘Well!’ said Jonathan, leaving it to the doctor to break the bad news about Bill. ‘What the deuce have you been up to, Tiny? And where are your dogs and cats?’

  ‘Curse you, Bradley!’ said Tiny, his little green eyes venomous, and, to Mrs. Bradley’s trained gaze, very watchful in spite of the fact that he was obviously in very great pain. ‘Don’t stand there like an ape! Give me a hand, can’t you?—Fielding, leave me alone! I know what’s wrong! It’s my knee.’

  Jonathan shrugged his wide shoulders.

  ‘What I can’t make out,’ he said, ‘is how you got that door open.’

  ‘I had to drag myself
up on my sound leg,’ said Tiny, ‘and use the doorkey, of course.’

  ‘Who told Anstey to come for me?’

  ‘How should I know?—Did someone?’

  ‘Yes. Anstey got a typed message.’

  ‘A typed message? I don’t understand.—Ouch! What’s the damage, doctor?’

  ‘Kneecap,’ said the doctor laconically. ‘Have to get you into hospital. And, look here, Fullalove——’

  ‘Well? Don’t tell me I’ll never walk again, or rot of that kind!’

  ‘No, no. Only—well, look here, old man, it’s Bill … Yes, dead. I’m sorry, Tiny. He must have had a bad heart. The cold, you know. Too much. It packed him up, I’m afraid…. Here, Bradley, let’s give him a hand. If we heave him up on to his sound leg, he can hop as far as his bedroom. Take it easy, Tiny. Take it easy, old man.’

  ‘Bill?’ said Tiny. ‘But he couldn’t! Old Bill’s as strong as a horse! He—ouch! Sorry! Damn this knee! He—Bill—couldn’t—Oh, Lord, how it hurts! Oh, hell!’

  5. Parson’s Farewell

  *

  ‘Wyd was his parish, and houses far asonder,

  But yet he lafté not for reyne or thonder,

  In sicknesse and in mes-chief to visite

  The ferthest in his parisshe, smal and great.’

  Geoffrey Chaucer

  * * *

  JONATHAN, WHO, BY inclination, was but an intermittent churchgoer, had become very friendly with the vicar. The vicar was a bachelor and enjoyed a visit to the manor house for chess, sherry and a companionable pipe of tobacco, and Jonathan, elevated by his purchase of the manor house to the position of local squire, had been gently bullied by Deborah into setting an example to the parish by regularly attending Sunday Matins unless there was any good reason why he should not.