Dead Ground in Between

by Maureen Jennings

  “We’ll come as quick as we can, Inspector. Wouldn’t consider giving us a hand, would you? Move things along faster? Tim don’t move too swift right now.”

  “No, I won’t. Get on with it. Ten minutes!”

  He turned and pushed his way back through the undergrowth.

  —

  Jan had lit the oil lamp and the heater but the hideout was still cold and dark. The smell of the paraffin was strong in the air.

  “Are you hungry?” he asked his brother.

  Pim snuffled. “I d-don’t like it in here, Jan. I can’t breathe. Can’t we g-go somewhere else?”

  “There isn’t anywhere else. You’re afraid of the other place. Look, we’ll only stay here for tonight, I promise. I’ll turn up the heater and it’ll get warm in a jiffy.” He fished in his knapsack. “Here, I brought my Wizard. I haven’t even read it myself yet. Why don’t you lie on the bunk and have a look at it.”

  “All right,” said Pim with a sigh. “But I hope we d-don’t get into trouble.”

  “We won’t. Captain said we could use the hideouts whenever we wanted. We’ve just got to keep them tidy.” Taking a bar of chocolate from the knapsack, he broke off a piece and handed it to his brother.

  Pim stuffed it in his mouth, then stretched out on the cot and pulled a blanket over himself. “I still d-don’t understand how the old m-man ended up in the other hideout. He was t-too old to be a Scout. Do you think he w-was a f-fifth columnist?”

  Jan furrowed his brow. “Probably. He wouldn’t be dead otherwise, would he? Captain said we always had to be on the lookout for traitors. And if you found one it was only your duty to dispose of him.”

  “Do you think C-Captain killed him?”

  “He might have. He’s a brave man.”

  —

  Tyler had got Mrs. Mohan to agree to remain in her sitting room while he questioned her two lodgers. She protested vociferously about their innocence of any crime other than high spirits and reluctantly closed the door behind her. Wickers and Oldham arrived within the allotted ten minutes and took their places at the kitchen table. Tyler remained standing.

  “I’ll come straight to the point, gents. Put you out of your misery. Forget the rabbits and forget the bit of mischief at the police station. No, don’t pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about, Wickers.”

  Sam had been about to do the ostentatious protest of innocence.

  “Like I said,” continued Tyler, “I’m putting that aside for the time being. The reason I’m so eager to have a chinwag with you two blokes is because we have new information from the coroner about Jasper Cartwright’s death.”

  That got their attention.

  “Dr. Murnaghan has determined that the old man did not die from purely natural causes.”

  Tyler paused to see the effect his words had on the lads. Wickers’ expression was inscrutable; Oldham looked alarmed.

  “Can you expand on that a little, Inspector?” said Wickers. “I thought he’d died from exposure. Maybe had a stroke or something like that. That’s natural, ain’t it?”

  “No stroke. Somebody attacked him. They stuck a knife in his ribs.”

  Wickers dropped his mask. “Bloody hell. What are you talking about, Inspector? Who stuck a knife in his ribs?”

  “That’s what I’m trying to find out. The wound was not in itself enough to kill him, but that and the cold and damp were probably too much for his system. Put it this way. If he’d received proper medical help he might have survived – but he didn’t.”

  “Weeping Jesus,” said Oldham. “Why’d that happen?”

  “Don’t know yet. I said ‘somebody’ attacked him but it could have been more than one. Accomplices. A couple of mates or something like that.”

  Wickers threw up his hands. His eyes were angry. “Oi. Don’t look at us. We had nothing to do with it. Did we, Tim?”

  Oldham shook his head. “Christ, no. Nothing.”

  “We didn’t stir from this house that night or the next morning till you saw us in the court,” said Wickers. “Ask Mrs. Mohan. She cooked us supper and breakfast.”

  Tyler clicked his tongue. “You know as well as I do that she’s as deaf as a post. You could have come and gone in the night with a brass band two times over and she wouldn’t have heard you. The fact that you were present at breakfast proves nothing.”

  The two men exchanged glances with each other. Oldham was pale.

  “I swear we had nothing to do with any killing.”

  “When do you usually go out to snare the rabbits?” Tyler asked.

  They both hesitated, and Oldham left it to Wickers to answer.

  “Varies. Depending on what other kind of farm work we’ve got going on.”

  “Early mornings?”

  “Sometimes. Not in this weather, though. Even the bunnies want to stay in bed.”

  Tyler placed his hands on the table, leaning in close to them. “Let’s put it this way, lads. It would help me a lot to get a fix on Mr. Cartwright’s whereabouts after he left his house. I’ll overlook any little misdemeanour you might have been up to if it means you tell me the truth. Now, I’ll repeat the question. Did you encounter the old man at any time between Monday after ten o’clock at night and the early hours of Tuesday morning?”

  Wickers nudged his pal. “Tim. You tell him. I went out to check on the nets Tuesday morning, but I came right back in. I told you the weather was too bad. So we didn’t go out. We got a bit of extra kip until breakfast. Tell the inspector.”

  Oldham gulped. “That’s right, sir. Just what Sam says.”

  “Would you consider yourself a sound sleeper, Tim?”

  “Er…I suppose so, Inspector.”

  “Now I can see that you yourself aren’t up to much action at the moment, but what I also see is all kinds of possibility for your mate to get into trouble.”

  “Hey…what are you getting at?” Wickers said.

  “Let him talk for once.” Tyler faced Oldham. “Did Sam wake up first or did you?”

  “Me.”

  “Was he in bed when you woke up?”

  “Come on, Tyler,” protested Wickers. “You’re not going to pin this on me.”

  “It’s Inspector Tyler to you, lad. And if you interrupt again I’m going to slap a charge on you for interfering with the progress of justice.”

  He turned back to the nervous Oldham. “So, Tim. When you came to consciousness was your mate still in bed or not?”

  “Er, no. He was up.”

  “Dressed?”

  “Yes, I think so. I don’t really remember.”

  “Did he talk to you?”

  “How’d you mean?”

  “Did he say, ‘Rise and shine, Tim. Lovely day out. Time to get us some rabbits’?”

  “I don’t remember.”

  “What time was it when you got yourself out of bed?”

  “I dunno. Close on seven, I think.”

  “But you didn’t go out to the warren because Sam said the weather was too bad.”

  “That’s right.”

  Tyler could see that Oldham was virtually squirming in his chair as he tried to work out what was going on. Wickers didn’t move. He started to pick his teeth with his fingernail.

  “All right,” continued Tyler. “Let me get this clear in my noggin. Tim, you woke up to see your mate was already dressed. You naturally assumed you were going to go out and catch rabbits like you usually do…”

  “Yes, er, I mean, no.”

  “But he said you weren’t going out because the weather was too bad.”

  “That’s right. And my ankle was hurting.”

  “Of course. And he’s a considerate pal, isn’t he?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And if he told you the weather was too bad to go out, we might suppose he had been outside himself. That’s how he knew.”

  Wickers was still.

  Tim paused. “Not necessarily. He could have looked out of the window.”

 
“It was pitch-black at that hour, how could he tell?”

  Tim glanced desperately at his pal. Sam took pity on him. He rocked back in his chair.

  “You’ve no need to ride Tim, Inspector. I did get up and get dressed ’cause I wanted to see if we could go rabbitting. When it was obvious the weather was too foul, I woke up Tim. Previous to that I was fast asleep. All night. Didn’t stir.”

  Tyler looked at Oldham. “Do you verify that?”

  “Certainly do.”

  “Even though you were asleep?”

  “Well, I did wake up once or twice because of the gale. Sam was right there sleeping, like he said.”

  “All right. I’ll be going back to the station shortly. Do what you have to do here then get yourselves into town. You haven’t fulfilled the conditions of your remand yet.”

  Wickers frowned. “I thought we’d cleaned up pretty good.”

  “Not good enough. The toilet somehow or other got blocked. Made a mess. You’re going to have to scrub it down.”

  —

  He left the two men to the ministrations of Mrs. Mohan, who came into the kitchen and fussed over them as if they were schoolboys who’d been victims of a bully. Perhaps they were. He’d been a bit hard on them, he supposed. Simple farming lads getting by in wartime. But he couldn’t shake the image of Tim Oldham so casually and skilfully breaking the neck of a struggling rabbit. Killing didn’t seem to faze him. However, so far Tyler had not discovered any reason why either man would harm Jasper Cartwright. Even if he’d caught them poaching, it wasn’t a reason to connect them with a brutal assault.

  Tyler put his head down into the wind and walked back to the Cartwright farm as fast as he could. Sleet was thickening. Biggs was coming through the garden gate as he approached. He was so excited he had a little bubble of spittle at the corner of his mouth.

  “I was just coming to get you, sir. I’ve made a discovery.”

  “Can it wait until we get inside? I’m freezing.”

  “Sorry, sir. I thought it better to tell you in private.”

  “Go on, then. Let’s at least step out of the wind.”

  They moved closer to the house and the protection of the eaves. There was a droplet of moisture at the end of the constable’s nose and he wiped it away with his hand.

  “Right. Out with it, lad,” said Tyler. “You’ve got fingerprints, I presume?”

  “Yes, sir. I took the prints of the POW as directed.”

  Biggs had to take a deep breath.

  Tyler waited. “And?”

  “He has a tiny scar on his thumb. And lo and behold there was an intact thumbprint on the metal box. Exact same scar.”

  “Any others?”

  “Not as clear, and there’s lots of overlapping, but they all look identical so I assume they belong to Mr. Cartwright senior.”

  “What about the ladder in the bunker?”

  “Couldn’t get anything good at all. We had the coroner and his crew and the boy going up and down so there was mud and dirt on the rungs. People were probably wearing gloves as well.”

  “Mr. Cartwright wasn’t. But you didn’t see anything that could be his? Anything that matched the prints on the metal box?”

  “No, sir. Nothing at all.”

  “And the rest of the hideout?”

  “Nothing, I’m afraid, sir. The surfaces were intractable.”

  “Intractable, were they? All right. Let’s go inside. I’ll need to talk to Iaquinta again.”

  —

  The sitting room felt crammed. Angelo was on the couch, Tyler seated in front of him. Mortimer was standing next to the chair, Biggs was inside the door, Mady outside.

  Tyler leaned forward.

  “Private Iaquinta, you haven’t been telling the truth, have you?”

  “Sir? I know not what you meant.”

  Tyler pointed to the metal case that Biggs had placed on a cleared table. “This belonged to Mr. Jasper Cartwright. You said you didn’t know it was in the barn and that you hadn’t touched it.”

  “That is correct.”

  “Can you explain why we have found your fingerprints on the lid?”

  Angelo drew in a deep breath. “There must be a mistake.”

  “May I have a look at your right hand?”

  Reluctantly, the Italian held out his hand.

  “You have a scar on the tip of your thumb.”

  Angelo stared at his own hand in a poor imitation of surprise, as if the small, jagged scar had suddenly appeared.

  “Ah, yes. I received it when I went fishing one day with my padre. The hook got caught there when the fish jumped.”

  “It must have been a deep cut.”

  “Yes, it was. Two stitches of necessity.”

  “I can show you the fingerprint impression my constable took from the case. The scar is quite obvious. It’s your fingerprint. How did it get there?”

  “I have no explanation, Inspector. Surely I am not the only man in the world who has scars?”

  “You are the only person on this farm who might have handled Mr. Cartwright’s case who has such a scar on his right thumb.”

  “That is all I can say.”

  “All right. I’ll have to take you back to the camp and we’ll continue this investigation in front of the commandant.”

  “Am I being charged?”

  “Not at the moment, but you are part of the ongoing investigation. Do you understand what I am saying?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  Tyler turned to his constable. “Biggs, stand by while Private Iaquinta puts on his outdoor things and then escort him to the car. You will sit in the back with him.”

  Young Biggs looked decidedly queasy for a minute, and Tyler realized the poor bloke had probably never had to be in such close contact with a suspect in a violent crime case.

  Tyler nodded at Mortimer. “Constable, you will assist Constable Biggs as necessary.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Angelo shifted. “Would it be possible to say goodbye to the members of the family, Inspector?”

  “’Fraid not.” Tyler ignored the expression of distress on the Italian’s face.

  “Constable Mortimer, I’d like you to move the car out of sight onto the road and wait there.”

  Tyler didn’t quite spell out to himself what he wanted to avoid, but he knew it was seeing a pretty young woman demonstrate that her heart was broken.

  —

  Tyler went to tell the Cartwrights he was returning to Ludlow. Susan was dealing with something at the sink. Edie was setting the table, where John and Ned were sitting.

  “Excuse me, folks. Just wanted to let you know I’m going back to Ludlow. I’ll drop off Angelo Iaquinta at the camp on the way.”

  “Any developments?” Ned asked.

  “We have located the metal box that belonged to Jasper. It was in the barn. It was underneath some sacking on one of the shelves.”

  Ned frowned. “You’re telling us the Itie stole it?”

  “He didn’t say that,” protested Edie. “That’s an unwarranted assumption.”

  “Is it? Inspector, did the Itie steal Jasper’s treasure box?” John asked.

  “We don’t know yet.”

  “If he did, what’s to say he didn’t stab him into the bargain?” Ned winked.

  “Don’t say that,” Edie cried.

  Susan went to her husband and put her hands on his shoulders. “Don’t fret, John. The inspector will get to the truth.”

  Tyler wished he had as much confidence as she was expressing. At the moment, he didn’t really have a clue as to what had happened.

  “By the way, Mr. Cartwright, Mrs. Cartwright, I’d appreciate it if you could give me a list of what you think was in the box. I’ll ring you as soon as I know anything further.”

  The last thing he saw as he closed the door behind him was the pale, stricken face of Edie Walpole.

  —

  Tyler sent Constable Mady back to Ludlow, riding one bicycle, wheel
ing the other. He himself joined the others in the car, and, after a couple of coughs, Annabel started up.

  Nobody spoke for the entire trip into Ludlow. Angelo sat ramrod straight, his eyes closed. Tyler could only guess what was going through his mind. It was hard to believe he was capable of stabbing an old, unarmed man, but who knew, maybe he’d done it in the heat of the moment. Wouldn’t be the first time a crime had been committed in that way. But there was still the thorny question of how Jasper had ended up in the hideout, a place known to so few.

  As Mortimer turned into the camp a soldier stepped out of his sentry hut and came over to the car. Tyler showed his identity card.

  “I’m bringing Private Iaquinta back from the Cartwright farm.”

  The soldier peered into the car. “Hello, Angelo. How come you’re getting a lift from the police? Not in trouble, I hope.”

  Angelo shrugged. “Better ask the inspector, not me.”

  Tyler ignored the curiosity in the sentry’s face. “Where will I find the commandant?”

  “Keep right for about one hundred yards. He’s in the hut at the end of the road.”

  He lifted the barrier and they drove on through.

  “Charlie is a nice chap,” said Angelo. “All the guards are good fellows.”

  The grounds were utterly deserted, with only a couple of soldiers parading the area. They looked wet and cold.

  “I’ll just check in with Captain Beattie,” Tyler said to Mortimer. “I’ll be quick as I can. You can wait in the car.”

  He got out, and another sentry stepped forward who was guarding the hut.

  “Inspector Tyler to see Captain Beattie.”

  “Righty-o,” said the guard in a cheery voice. “I’ll see what he’s up to.”

  Was it something in the drinking water that was making these soldiers so very pleasant? Tyler wondered. Not that he wanted them to be officious and surly, but the two he’d met so far seemed to be going out of their way to appear un-military. Did this mean they were too lax? It could happen to anybody whose only job was to keep an eye out for trouble that nobody was in the slightest bit interested in creating. He felt he might well be in a stage play instead of a brutal war. And the story was a modern version of Romeo and Juliet. Or maybe it was King Lear? What was his role, then? Come on, Shakespeare, don’t let me down. Give me some words of wisdom to hold on to. But before he could commune with the Bard, the guard reappeared.