‘I’d better get on to Mohawk Tours,’ said Darling. ‘Not that they’ll be able to help much. If they’d lost a cash customer en route they’d have reported it before this. Still, I must see them.’
‘Right. I must get back to Torbury. You’ll let me know anything useful?’
‘Of course, and that goes for you, too.’
The two detective-inspectors parted on terms of personal goodwill and official disappointment that the inquiry was not bearing much fruit, and Darling went straight to the local office which booked places on Mohawk Tours motor-coaches. As he walked along the High Street at Hagford, another point occurred to him. As Price was employed by the railway, he would be allowed some travel concessions. It seemed odd that he should forego these on his annual holiday. However, probably he merely wanted a change.
Mohawk Tours were helpful – almost too helpful, in fact. Two men named Price had indeed taken their tour, and had been very popular with the party. Darling, who could never have been accused of scamping his job, asked whether one of them had not been very noticeably left-handed.
‘I could not say, but the driver who took out that tour may be having his change-over day. I will ring up,’ said the agency clerk, who was curious to know what this was all about. The result of his inquiry was interesting. Both Prices had played cards with the driver, who was also the courier. Both were slick dealers. Both dealt right-handed and at lightning speed. He had never noticed either of them to be left-handed at table or elsewhere.
A description of the brothers, sought eagerly now by the Inspector, did not tally in the slightest with the description given by the landlady, the station staff, or Mandsell, all of whom had been in agreement.
‘So what’s happened to the Prices is anybody’s guess,’ said Darling on the telephone to Vardon. ‘We’re getting on their trail at once. Someone impersonated them on that trip, but whether it was a put-up job, or whether they’ve been kidnapped, it’s hard to say. Anything more from your end?’
‘Nothing yet, and Mrs Bradley and her secretary are coming your way, I think. The old lady, between ourselves, is as much at sea as the rest of us, I fancy. Still, we’ve got our orders to give her all the gen, so I’ll pass on what you’ve told me. What about the Faintley aunt and the search warrant?’
‘I haven’t applied for one yet. I may not need to. My own view is that Faintley was merely a stooge – someone obviously respectable, who could be trusted to pick up the parcels.’
‘What do you think they contained? – dynamite?’
‘Snow. That’s my guess up to date. Snow in the statues and instructions in the flat package collected by Mandsell.’
‘No wonder Tomson’s scared. I’ve been thinking along those lines myself, as a matter of fact, but would Tomson have invented anything so unlikely as ferns being hidden in the statues?’
‘No. It’s a code word, I expect. He hopes to diddle us with it, and, up to date, he’s succeeded. He’s monkey-clever, you know. We’ve had him on our books for years, and have never caught him out yet. I’m hoping he’s stubbed his toe this time, though.’
Chapter Six
MYSTERY MEN
‘When I burned in desire to question them further,
they made themselves air, into which they vanished.’
shakespeare – Macbeth
« ^ »
‘Dear me,’ said Mrs Bradley, meeting Mark at the entrance to the dining-room, ‘and what does this betoken?’
‘We’ve finished breakfast,’ replied Mark, ‘and we’re going home to-day.’ He glanced down at his best trousers. ‘Everything’s packed, and we’re going out for a bit of a walk before lunch, and then, directly lunch is over, we shall be off. I shan’t be sorry.’
‘I, too, have had my fill of Cromlech,’ Mrs Bradley agreed. ‘A pleasing village, but, on the whole, rather lacking in amenities.’
‘Saw it all the first day,’ muttered Mark. ‘There’s nothing decent to do except bathe, and the tide isn’t always right for that, and if you take a boat out you’ve got to have a boatman. Now, if I’d gone to France…’ He proceeded to give a colourful description of the delights which he and Ellison had envisaged.
‘France,’ said Mrs Bradley reminiscently. ‘Ah, yes, so you told me before. I shall fly to Lascaux to-morrow… at least, not all the way to Lascaux, but to the airport nearest to it.’
‘To-morrow? Oh, I say, you are lucky!’
‘When does school reopen?’
‘Wednesday, worse luck. Still, I shall see Ellison again. They’ve gone to Jersey.’
‘Indeed? Well, you had better solicit your dear parents’ permission to come with me to France. It will not be a long visit because neither of us can spare the time, but we could be back by Monday evening.’
‘I say!’ shouted Mark. ‘Do you mean it?’ He rushed off at once, and brought his father back with him. The parental blessing was evoked, and the Torbury aerodrome hopped one calm, one excited and one puzzled passenger to Northolt. There a specially commissioned police car rushed them to Heath Row.
‘But I can’t see what all this is in aid of,’ said Laura plaintively to the driver, who happened to be her fiancé, Detective-Inspector Gavin of Scotland Yard. ‘What’s cooking?’
‘Mrs Croc. did not confide in us. She said she was tired of the Faintley case. We’re not in on it officially, but off the record we’ve made a few inquiries about the Faintleys, as they used to live in London —’
‘Anything interesting about them?’
‘Damn-all. Just an ordinary suburban family respected if not loved. Bombed out in 1941. Pop was a shop steward, daughter trained as a teacher. Otherwise, as we say in our patois, nothing known.’
‘What do you make of it?’
‘I’d have said cosh and grab, but the fact that the handbag and that expensive watch were left behind by the murderer effectively disposes of that theory, and there was no attempt at funny business, according to the medical evidence at the first inquest… just the one clean thrust of the Commando knife. The chap was no bungler, I’ll say that for him. He just took a dislike to her, apparently, and she’d had it. I wish we knew why. I imagine your boss has rumbled something, but she’s not likely to tell us what it is until she’s pretty sure. Where’s she actually making for?’
‘Lascaux. The caves, you know.’
‘Oh, ah? Tells us a lot, doesn’t it? Still, we’ve got standing orders from the high-ups to afford her any facilities she wants, and apparently she wants Air France, and here we are!’
‘I’ve decided to leave you to your own devices for a few days, dear Laura,’ said Mrs Bradley, as they stood waiting for the aeroplane. ‘Don’t get into mischief. Remember that I place a high value upon your services. Oh, and our good Gavin, who has acquired a short term of leave of absence, may occupy my room at Cromlech while I’m away.’
‘He can’t. He’s going to drive me back to-night and stay the night, and then I’m pushing him off to Scotland to visit his mother. I can’t have him around while I’m so busy.’
‘Well, be reasonable in carrying out your plans. I realize that nothing will keep you away from that cliff-top house where you found the body. Now that the police have concluded their investigations there, I have an instinctive feeling—’
‘You’re right, at that. I did think of infesting the place again when I get back. I don’t suppose there’s a thing to find out, and, even though the police pretend to have given up crawling all over it, I daresay some of them have been told to check the visitors. One thing, it’s such a brute of a climb to get in the only way one can… because they’re sure to have filled up that gap that young Mark and I made with our battering ram… that I don’t suppose many people will trouble themselves to go there, especially as the exact locality hasn’t been made too public.’
‘Well, I do not propose to fuss, but I would like to point out that the house may have been empty the last time you went there, or it may only have seemed empty. It is possible t
hat you might be recognized.’
‘And you think it won’t be healthy up there for snoopers? I know. I’ll look out for myself, so you need not worry.’
‘I have no intention of worrying, child. Good luck to your hunting. Not that I think there will be very much to find out.’
Laura was greatly attached to her boat, the Canto Five, and spent half an hour or so in messing about checking petrol, oil, stores, and the engine before she took in her anchor, so that it was a quarter to three on the following afternoon before she got away from her anchorage. Her scheme was twofold. She had a desire to see the picturesque little village of Wedlock, which lay about two miles in from the coast, and she also had a theory that, once she had rounded the tremendous headland on which the mystery house was built, it might be possible to find a way up to the house without the fatiguing climb which had taken her and Mark to the house when she had discovered Miss Faintley’s body. There must, she argued, be an easier way up than either of the paths they had used. Fuel and provisions had had to be taken to the place when it was used as a school. Therefore there must be a road.
It was pleasant cruising weather. She put out to sea and gave the rocky headland a wide berth. Then as she came round the great bend, she began to edge in towards the shore. As she had expected from her study of map and chart, the headland sloped down on the north-east side to a sandy bay. She made for the middle of this, felt her way in, and, at three fathoms, paid out plenty of chain to hold on the sandy bottom, took to the dinghy and rowed herself ashore. She beached the little boat well up on an incoming tide, and took careful stock of her surroundings.
There were a good many people on the beach, and there was another cabin cruiser anchored some distance off, too far away for Laura to be able to take stock of it. A low seawall bounded the sand, and, from it, a steep road, possible, however, for cars, went up from the sea towards some pleasantly-situated houses. Half-way up this road another branched off at right-angles and was marked: Cromlech Down School Only. Private.
‘This is it,’ thought Laura. Firmly grasping the ash-plant which she had brought with her in the dinghy, she began to ascend the slope. The surface was good, and a series of serpentine windings kept the gradients at about (she judged) one in nine. The bends made the walk a long one, and she decided that she must have covered the better part of six miles before she came in sight of the house she was looking for. On this side it was fenced in with iron palings in which were set the main double gates. A derelict lodge, with vacant windows and part of the roof off, flanked these and had obviously been unoccupied for years, but the gates, although they were locked, offered no obstacle to the tall and agile Laura. She put her ash-plant between the bars and then climbed over, aware that if anyone happened to be looking out, she was in full view from the house. She picked up her stick and sauntered forward.
The gardens, if such they could be called, were, like the part of them that she and Mark had already seen, very much neglected. She perambulated unkempt paths, keeping the house in view but circumnavigating it, until she came round to the side where she had made entrance to find the body. There was the straight path which, when she had seen it last, had been carefully smoothed and sanded. It was much trampled now, probably, she thought, by policemen’s boots. She wondered whether the police had discovered any clues to the identity of Miss Faintley’s assailant, and she left the path to inspect the bush beneath which Miss Faintley’s head had been thrust. It was likely that the woman had been struck down on the path, and then the path resanded to obscure footprints and perhaps to cover up blood. The painstaking police no doubt had swept the path, taken a sample, and put the sand back.
She turned away, walked back to the path and followed it up to the house. At the great front door she knocked. The reverberation of emptiness came booming at her. She listened intently, but, once the sound of her own knocking had died, the silence, except for screaming gulls whom the noise, most likely, had disturbed, and the far-off sound of the sea on the headland rocks, settled down again even as, after a minute or two, the gulls returned to their fastnesses, the ledges and clefts of the cliff.
Laura went on round the house and found the window which (presumably) the police had broken in order to force an entrance. The catch was temptingly exposed. Laura was not the person to ignore a challenge. She pushed back the catch, opened the window and inserted her head. In a very loud voice she called out: ‘Hullo, there! Anybody in?’ There was no answer. A sudden breeze blew past her ear and shut an open door with a bang which sounded loud enough to bring down the house.
‘Hope it hasn’t jammed!’ thought Laura. She waited for a few moments to see whether the slam of the door would bring anybody to find out what had happened, but everything remained still, so she climbed in through the window, determined to tour the house.
It was a big place. Besides the kitchen regions and a large, much-scrawled-upon room which seemed to speak of bored children on wet afternoons and which was completely unfurnished even to the bare floorboards much trampled, again, she supposed, by policemen, there were seven other rooms on the ground floor. Only one of these, the curtained room she had seen on her first visit, was furnished. It contained a carpet, a suite of upholstered furniture, several small chairs, a large table (much scratched), a rusty metal filing-cabinet which she opened and found to be empty, and a case of pressed ferns. This was fastened to the wall and each exhibit was labelled, both botanically and in English, thus:4
Polypodium Vulgare
Polystichum Lonchitis
Trichomanes Radicans
Asplenium Ceterach
Asplenium Septentrionale
Lastrea Filix-Mas
Polypodium Phegopteris
Asplenium Fontanum
Asplenium Marinum
Athyrium Filix-Foemina
Botrychium Lunaria
Blechnum Spicant
Lastreas (Nephrodium)
Ophioglossum Vulgatum
Osmunda Regalis
Common Polypody
Holly Fern
British Fern
Scaly Spleenwort
Forked Spleenwort
Male Fern
Beech Fern
Smooth-Rock Spleenwort
Sea Spleenwort
Lady Fern
Moonwort
Hard Fern
Buckler Fern
Adder’s-Tongue Fern
Royal Fern
‘Shades of the prison house!’ said Laura aloud, thinking of her own schooldays. ‘Wonder why they didn’t take it with them?’ The specimens were indeed remarkably well preserved and had been carefully – one would say lovingly – mounted, and the printing, carried out in Indian ink, was both artistic and neat. The other downstairs rooms having provided nothing of interest, Laura decided to try the rooms on the first floor. These did not coincide in every case with the ground floor rooms, and she concluded that some had been considerably altered, possibly to provide dormitories. This theory was substantiated by her discovery of a row of small washbasins, five tiny bathrooms with partitions between them which did not reach the ceiling, and, opposite them, a row of water-closets.
There was a third storey to the house but this yielded nothing of the slightest interest; neither did two attics at the top of a small wooden staircase. Bored by her fruitless exploration, Laura went to one of the attic windows. It was heavily cobwebbed, and she was about to brush aside some of this obscurity to look out upon the view when she drew back. The attic window overlooked the part of the garden between the house and the ruined lodge, and two men were approaching.
‘Holiday sightseers,’ was her first impression. ‘Wonder whether they’ve come to see the spot marked X or not? I didn’t know the news was all that much public’
She knelt on the boarded floor and did her best to peer through the window without getting too near the glass. But the men were no casual holiday-makers in spite of their hatlessness and careless holiday clothes. They came straight up to the house
and one of them thundered on the door just as she had done, but even louder.
She crept to the top of the attic staircase and prayed that no creaking board would betray her, for, after a very short interval, the men let themselves in. She could hear their voices in the hall. Then they went into one of the rooms. She heard the door being shut.
Clutching her ash-plant, she began to creep down the stairs. They could hardly be Miss Faintley’s murderers, she decided, to come boldly and in broad daylight like this, but they obviously had some right to be in the house, which she most certainly had not. It would entail no end of awkward explanation if she were caught on the premises. They might even be police officers, although she did not think that plain-clothes men would wear cricket shirts, sweaters and grey flannel bags. Whoever they were, it behoved her to get away as circumspectly and as quickly as she could.
There was no sound of voices when she came to the foot of the staircase. She knew which room the men were in because it was the only one in which the door was shut. She herself had been careful to leave all the inside doors open as she had found them. Taking special care, and thankful that she was still wearing the rubber-soled shoes she used on the boat, she made her way to the kitchen and climbed out of the open window. She did not attempt to close it. The men, if they investigated, must think that it had been left as it was by the police.
Keeping on the grass, she made for the bushes, and, stooping very low, crept round them until she was out of line with the windows behind which lurked the two mysterious visitors. As she went, she pondered. The men had obviously been furnished with a key to the front door. Why, then, she wondered, had they troubled to beat that thunderous tattoo? The only explanation was that they had tried to find out, just as she had, whether the house was inhabited. But if they had the right to enter, and were furnished with the means of entry, why did they need to find out whether the house was occupied or empty? Did they expect that the police were still in possession?
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