‘Did you happen to notice the time when you put the light on?’
‘Matter o’ fact I did, thinkin’ to get out the pools results. Quarter after four, it wur.’
‘One more question,’ said Pollard. ‘When did you last have a conversation with Miss Hilda Rainbird?’
Fred gaped at him.
‘With the ’Oly ’En? Cor lumme, mister, I dunno. Not to say passin’ the time o’ day when us meets in Church Lane. Parish Noo Year Party, could be.’
‘Thanks,’ said Pollard. ‘That’s all. Off the record, you’re in a better position than you were as far as this enquiry goes.’
Stymied for words Fred gave an abrupt nod and resumed his digging.
‘Looks as though he’s clear, doesn’t it, sir?’ Toye asked when they were out of earshot.
‘Yes. And if Dart’s correct in concluding that Roach couldn’t have got to the Monk’s Leap before four, Earwaker couldn’t have murdered her and got home by 4.15 to make up his fire without overtaking Mrs Winship on the path. I refuse to believe that he risked sprinting or bicycling down the front drive, even if he could have done it in the time. I’m sure that we can rule out any idea that he went up to the place after 4.15. Roach went out hurriedly, without her proper tea which she’d taken the trouble to collect from the kitchen. She wouldn’t have hung about up at the Leap for half an hour or so on a drizzling November evening. Besides I’m quite certain that she was murdered before dark.’
‘Yes,’ agreed Toye. ‘And I suppose any idea of Earwaker getting a pal to make up his fire can be ruled out. A bit too risky.’
‘Quite. Well, exit one of our two suspects. Still, as Inspector Beakbane remarked when I was rock-bottom at Meldon, you’ve got to clear the ground before you can really get started on a case... Let’s go and visit the scene of the crime.’
They had no difficulty in finding the track which led up the slope behind the Priory, and on through the ruins to the Monk’s Path. At the Leap they spent a little time reconstructing the murder, and then stood for a few moments by the railing looking at the view. It was a still day, flooded with pale November sunlight. Pollard gazed longingly at the smouldering autumnal bronze of Sinneldon. To be up there with Jane... One day they’d have a walking holiday on Crownmoor. Stay at a decent little pub somewhere. The thought of his wife brought back the possibility of his promotion and the sharp urgency of the present. He wheeled round and stared at the clump of bushes on the far side of the path where the heel-print had been found.
‘Got your bearings from that map we saw last night?’ he asked Toye. ‘There — straight ahead — is the house and the drive, leading down to the lodge and the road. If you turn left at the lodge you pass the small gate on to this path, and go down the village street out on to the Highcastle-Polharbour road. If you turn right, you gradually bear right round the west side of the park, and pass the lodge and gates of that second drive we saw just now, and presumably another wicket gate at the far end of this path we’re on. Then the road climbs a steep hill with some sharp bends, and eventually re-joins the main road a bit nearer Polharbour.’
Toye nodded.
‘Okay, sir,’ he said. ‘I’m with you.’
‘Anything strike you?’
‘The Highcastle chaps don’t seem to have taken much interest in these other ways of getting here, do they?’
‘Just what I’ve been thinking. You cut along to the right, and go round and see what the set-up at the second lodge is like, and if the gates are open, anyway for pedestrians. Keep your eyes skinned generally, although I don’t quite know what for. While you’re gone, I’ll ferret about round here.’
As Toye’s footsteps died away Pollard crossed the path and subjected the bushes to a careful scrutiny. The patch of trampled grass had recovered by now, and only the pegs inserted by the Highcastle CID indicated its position. Deciding that he was most unlikely to come on any clue in an area which had been so meticulously searched, he walked on into the ruins. Jane would want to paint them, he thought. Shafts of sunlight and late autumnal scatters of scarlet and gold lightened the sombreness of broken grey walls and dank undergrowth. The sense of remoteness which had been commented on by Dart also struck Pollard forcibly, and he went on further to confirm the surprising nearness of the Priory. As he looked down on it a blend of domestic and scholastic sounds floated up, together with a smell of cooking. His eye fell on the back of the West Wing with its closed windows. Roy Garnish had provided himself with the amenity of an integral garage, unobtrusively built out so as to be invisible from the front of the house, while his tenant would have to make do with the various outbuildings away to the left. That garage, Pollard thought with interest, is the nearest building to the Monk’s Leap, for what it’s worth.
He made his way down the slope to have a closer look. The garage was a brick-built rectangle with a modern tilting door, secured by a Yale lock. It had no windows and was entirely unremarkable. A short drive coming round the side of the West Wing linked it to the gravel sweep in front of the Priory. He followed this, pausing to peer in through the kitchen window, thinking of Timothy Ferrars and the alleged supper party.
The room was lavishly equipped, with a dining area near the window. If the latter had been open at the bottom conversation could easily have been overheard by someone listening outside.
Pollard went back to the garage door. Anybody coming out of it could have been seen from the back windows of the school, he thought. On the other hand, in an institution which functioned with a regular rhythm there would be times when the risk of anyone looking out on that side would be minimal. For instance, during a match down on the games pitches, with the kitchen staff engrossed in preparations for tea. Realizing that he was theorizing not so much ahead of his data, but virtually in the absence of any data at all, he strolled on, intending to locate the windows of the boys’ dining-room, but stopped short in front of a red plastic dustbin at the back door of the West Wing, which stood aloof from a row of the plebeian galvanized iron variety outside the school. It was provided with the refinement of a foot-operated pedal for raising the lid. For the first time Pollard felt a faint stirring of excitement. What about the safest place of concealment being the most obvious? Dragging the river for the weapon was a predictable police reaction, so what about dumping it in a handy dustbin, from which with any luck it would be removed in the normal rubbish collection before anyone thought of looking for it there?
Suddenly remembering that he had noticed dustbins standing outside the houses in the village that morning, Pollard took a quick look round, seized the red one in his arms and carried it up into the seclusion of the ruins. He depressed the pedal and the lid flew back, disclosing a bundle of newspapers which had been put in on the top of the rest of the debris. He spread some of these on the ground and began the unappetising task of sorting the contents of the bin.
Mrs Garnish was clearly unfamiliar with the practice of wrapping up her kitchen refuse in hygienic parcels. Soggy tea leaves and coffee grounds had filtered through everything. With a grimace Pollard removed a quantity of eggshells and various opened tins and grapefruit skins. Underneath these were some nauseating leftovers and torn-up circulars. Then came a lot of damp biscuits, of a well-known make sold by good grocers, and the tin from which they had come.
Must have gone soft, he thought, throwing some crumbs to a companionable robin watching him from a nearby bush. The paper wrapping round the tin was oddly discoloured. He sniffed at it and realized that it had been scorched. Puzzled, he covered his hand with a piece of paper and removed the lid. Inside was some charred material which gave off a pungent smell. Sniffing again he identified the antiseptic astringence of Dettol, and sat back on his haunches wondering if this curious find could possibly have any connection with the case. Finally he put the tin carefully aside, and worked down through more unsavoury layers to the final horror of a very high chicken carcass.
‘Having a picnic, sir?’ enquired Toye decorously.
‘Damn your eyes,’ replied Pollard. ‘Help me get this stinking muck back into the bin, and then if the coast’s clear you can nip down and park it outside the back door of the West Wing again.’
By the time Toye returned Pollard had cautiously shaken a few of the burnt fragments from the tin on to a sheet of newspaper, and was examining them through a powerful lens.
‘I’ll swear it’s bandages,’ he said. ‘There are some tacky bits which could be bloody. Rum, isn’t it?’
‘Most likely they’re all-electric in there, and haven’t any means of burning stuff?’ suggested Toye.
‘It doesn’t hang together, though,’ said Pollard thoughtfully. ‘Why should people who are so filthy with their household rubbish be squeamish about chucking soiled bandages into a dustbin? D’you know, I think we’ll send it up to the lab boys? Anyway, it’ll look as though we’re being diligent little detectives, won’t it? Did you happen on anything?’ he asked, tipping the fragments back into the tin and wrapping it in paper.
‘The North Lodge, as it was called on that map, doesn’t exist any longer. It’s been demolished, right down to the foundations. The gates are locked, and at first sight look as though they haven’t been opened for years, but I took a sniff at the keyhole, and then shoved in a bit of blotting paper. Luckily there’s a sample in my diary.’ Toye took out an envelope and extracted a strip of white blotting paper soiled at one end.
Pollard inhaled.
‘Oil, all right,’ he said. ‘Fairly recent, I’d say, from the amount soaked up. We’ll send this too, while we’re about it. I suppose it might be a handy way in for the village lads visiting the foreign girls after hours. They could bypass the inhabited lodge this way. Let’s drop in on the headmaster, and ask him if that gate’s ever used officially.’
John Ainsworth was fetched from the class he was teaching and arrived in his study in a state of barely-controlled exasperation.
‘The North Gate? Good lord, it hasn’t been opened for ages. The last time was when a big tree on that side of the grounds had to be taken down, and we didn’t want heavy lorries chawing up the front drive. Must be about five years ago. There’s a key somewhere.’
He rummaged in a drawer and produced it.
‘Thanks,’ said Pollard. ‘We may want to take a look around there. Sorry we’re having to be such a confounded nuisance.’
John Ainsworth suddenly recovered his good humour and grinned.
‘Apologies for getting a bit steamed up! This business is damn all in the middle of term, even if the parents are making surprisingly little stink about it. Anything else I can tell you?’
‘When was the North Lodge taken down?’ Pollard asked him.
‘Before we moved here in 1953, anyway. According to Garnish it was derelict and not worth putting in order. But there seems to have been some feeling about it in the village. Housing was still pretty difficult from the war years. He’d spent a packet on modernization, though, and I suppose there was a limit, even for him.’
‘Do they come down much? It’s a goodish way from town.’
‘Quite often in the summer, just for a few nights. Not much at this time of year, although as a matter of fact they’ve turned up twice during the last couple of weeks.’
‘I wonder if by any chance you’ve got a photograph of them? We’ll have to check their Polharbour alibi for last Saturday as a matter of routine, and it would speed things up.’
‘We have as it happens.’ John Ainsworth got up and unhooked a framed photograph from a wall. ‘He gave away the prizes the first year we were here. Once and for all, he said. They make a point of keeping clear of local commitments. That’s Garnish, and that’s his wife. Let me have it back: it’s interesting to have a record of things.’
Pollard thanked him, and insisted on giving a receipt. He went on to the subject of Sister Roach.
‘My wife would be a lot better on her than I am,’ replied John Ainsworth. ‘Look here, what about my sending you in some lunch on a couple of trays? We could all have coffee together afterwards.’
There was no question at all about Sister Roach’s professional competence and reliability.
‘We’ve never had anyone so good,’ Faith Ainsworth assured Pollard. ‘She knew her job, and was absolutely dependable. Most conscientious.’
‘What was she like as a colleague?’ he asked.
‘Oh, most helpful. She didn’t mind lending a hand anywhere if she hadn’t got patients to see to. And always so anxious to do the right thing.’
‘But in a more personal sense?’ Pollard persisted.
‘Well,’ Faith hesitated slightly, ‘she was certainly rather reserved and didn’t make any close friends. But she never quarrelled with people or made trouble.’
‘How did she get on with the domestic staff?’
‘They disliked her,’ said John Ainsworth bluntly. ‘They thought she used to snoop to see if they were doing their work properly.’
‘That was mostly Ethel Earwaker, John. She’s a bit too independent.’
‘Have you any reason to suppose that she ever did snoop, apart from the incident of Fred Earwaker and his girlfriend?’ asked Pollard. ‘I think I must tell you that a second person in the village has admitted being blackmailed by her.’
The two Ainsworths looked appalled.
‘How could she do such dreadful things?’ Faith burst out, flushed and tearful. ‘She seemed such a quiet harmless little person.’
‘I think she probably felt terribly insecure,’ Pollard replied.
‘Insecure?’ repeated John Ainsworth in a baffled tone. ‘Why on earth? She had a good job here, and nurses are on a seller’s market if anyone is.’
‘Not economically insecure, perhaps. Insecure as a person because for some reason she’d not been able to form satisfactory human relationships. So she may have tried to compensate through her blackmailing strangleholds on people.’
‘Poor woman,’ said Faith, drying her eyes. ‘And this is such an easy friendly place. The present staff are a particularly nice lot.’
‘I’m afraid,’ Pollard told her, ‘that she came to you too late. Where did she go in the holidays? She doesn’t appear to have seen much of her half-sister in Lewisham.’
‘She was reticent about her own affairs, but it somehow got out that she took temporary jobs, and that they were very paying. Like looking after rich old ladies while their companions had holidays.’
‘I see,’ said Pollard thoughtfully.
‘I wish to God we’d never imported her,’ John Ainsworth remarked gloomily. ‘Her references were perfectly okay. She’d certainly moved round a bit, but then some people do. I remember saying at the time that she didn’t look like a stayer. Of course we’d have sacked her on the spot if we’d had the slightest idea of what she was really like. It’s true that the daily women complained that she snooped, but you know what a lot of gossip goes on in a place like this, and we just didn’t take it seriously, did we?’
Faith shook her head unhappily.
‘Perhaps we ought to have — John, I’ve just thought of the boys’ name for her.’
‘Cockroach, according to Inspector Dart’s report, I think?’ said Pollard.
‘Her full nickname was The Curious Cockroach,’ John Ainsworth told him.
‘Did you take it to mean that they thought her a bit of an oddity?’
‘That’s how it struck us, yes.’
‘Interesting. I think, you know, that with the perspicacity of the young they were using the word curious in its more usual sense.’
Chapter Fourteen
‘In here, if you don’t mind.’
Hugh Winship waited for Pollard to enter his study. Following him in, he shut the door, and stood with his back to it, very erect.
‘Never cared for shilly-shallying, Chief Inspector,’ he said. ‘Are you here to charge m’wife with this murder?’
‘No, sir,’ replied Pollard, meeting the older man’s straight look with one equall
y direct. ‘I don’t consider that present evidence would justify such a step. But Mrs Winship freely admits being at the Monk’s Leap within a very short time of the crime, and I still feel it’s possible that she unconsciously noticed something connected with it. That’s why I’m asking to see her.’
‘Can’t prevent a man doing his job, I suppose. She’s resting upstairs. I’ll go and ask her to come down. Drawing-room’s this way.’
As they came in a girl sitting in the window looked up from a newspaper. She was small and slight, with dark hair and an attractive, rather thoughtful face. Two Jack Russell terriers ran forward, and whimpered as they nosed the turn-ups of Pollard’s trousers.
‘Chief Inspector Pollard, m’dear,’ said Hugh Winship. ‘M’stepdaughter, Miss Julian Wrey. I’ll go up and have a word with m’wife. Down, sirs! Don’t let ’em be a nuisance.’
He went out of the room.
‘Won’t you sit down?’ invited Julian, putting the newspaper aside.
‘Thank you, Miss Wrey.’
Pollard sat down and gave a quick appreciative glance round the room and back to the girl herself. Not pretty in the conventional sense, he thought, but extraordinarily pleasing. And a lot of character.
‘This is a lovely house,’ he said warmly.
Julian Wrey looked slightly surprised at this opening gambit.
‘Queen Anne,’ she told him. ‘The best of all periods for domestic architecture, to my mind.’
‘And mine,’ he answered. ‘You’ve been living in Highcastle lately, though, haven’t you?’
‘Yes. Until last Friday,’ she told him. ‘I’ve come home now to get ready for my wedding in January.’
‘May I wish you joy?’ he said, noting the challenge in her voice. ‘I’m sorry to have to bother you with tiresome routine questions when you must have a good deal on hand.’
‘Thank you.’ Julian replied, looking at him steadily, without returning his smile.
‘Well, here’s the first question. Were you in Affacombe last Saturday?’
The Affacombe Affair Page 13
