“Yes?”
“Besides … I suppose all parents are alike. No girl’s good enough. But she seemed to us to be the sort who’d be fonder of a good time than a husband and home and children.”
“I see.”
“Yes,” said Sarah. Littlejohn didn’t quite know what she was affirming, but she seemed quite settled in her own mind in approving some point or other.
“So he didn’t seem to have any worries the last time you saw him?”
“No … If we’d known about all this, we’d have let him alone. Better Laura than …”
The stricken woman was weeping again. Sarah rose and comforted her, glaring at Littlejohn in reproach.
Mrs. Free sniffed back her tears and dried her eyes.
“I’m sorry,” she said simply. “Was there anythin’ else, sir?”
“I’m sorry, too, Mrs. Free. It’s all very distressing to me to have to keep asking these trying questions, but I’ve got my duty …”
“Of course you have.”
“Of course you ’ave,” echoed Sarah like a chairman giving a casting vote, finally and defiantly.
“And Ronald hadn’t mentioned anybody quarrelling with him … about his love-affair, shall we say?”
“No. Johnny Hunter was wild about it at first. He was keen on Laura, I’m told. They quarrelled, but soon made it up agen. Johnny’s a nice boy. The sort who wouldn’t hold anythin’ against anybody for long.”
“That’s right,” affirmed Sarah, blinking her eyes ferociously and then contorting her face as though having difficulty in drawing the lids apart.
Outside, the road was very busy. Drovers bringing cattle from the morning’s stock auctions in Melchester, and cars and turnouts on their ways to town for the afternoon’s produce markets. A large, red bus thundered past.
“That’s my bus … I’ll ’ave another half-hour to wait now,” asserted Sarah, settling down more cosily in her chair, determined to be comfortable while she waited. “I see Mrs. Fairfield was on it. Promised to meet ’er, I did. Owe her two and six. Spent all me money last week and had to borrer from ’er. I’d better call and pay me debts to-night.”
The name had a familiar ring to Littlejohn.
“Let me see, isn’t that the mother of the girl Johnny Hunter’s courting?”
“Yes. Funny sort o’ courtin’ too, if you ask me. Mrs. Fairfield’s proper bothered about it. Told me so last week. In confidence, of course. I can speak my mind here, I know. Neether of you’ll say a word outside … So I’ll not be breakin’ me word.”
Littlejohn smiled. That’s the way it was. Secrets whispered under solemn oath of not telling a soul soon all over the shop!
Sarah was going it full steam ahead.
“… Mrs. Fairfield’s that worried about their Jessie. The girl’s mad about Johnny and sometimes you’d think he was the same about ’er, Mrs. Fairfield tells me. And then, suddenly, he’ll change. Speak cynical to her, kiss ’er and turn nasty, and all that …”
Mrs. Free, her mind taken from her own troubles, showed sudden interest.
“Surely Jessie’s not been tellin’ all that sort o’ stuff?”
Sarah shot out her neck like a hen drinking.
“Oh yes, she ’as. Mrs. F. says she can’t sleep o’ nights for worry and she’s been up a time or two in the small hours comfortin’ her. You tell things in the small hours you wouldn’t in the day.”
Littlejohn could well imagine a sort of third-degree on affairs of heart in the middle of the night!
“In case you don’t know it, Inspector, Mrs. Fairfield’s the late schoolmaster’s widow. Her and her two daughters live in the old schoolhouse, the present schoolmistress living in a flat in the village. They take in a lodger, you see, an’ only having three bedrooms, Jessie and her mother use the same room. That’s how it is her mother knows she can’t sleep.”
Mrs. Free explained it all pat. Littlejohn wondered if any secrets at all were hid from the matriarchal council of Ravelstone! Perhaps they even knew who’d killed Free! And wouldn’t tell a foreigner!!
Sarah wasn’t going to be stopped in the middle of a juicy narrative. She raised her voice, which mingled with and finally routed that of Mrs. Free.
“… I sez to ’er, ‘Mrs. Fairfield,’ I sez, ‘Mrs. Fairfield, there’s on’y one explanation for that. Johnny’s took her on the rebound from Laura Cruft. It often happens that way. When a man can’t get the girl he wants, he turns to another and pretends to himself she’s the girl he couldn’t have, and then when he sees she isn’t, he turns nasty’.”
This profound piece of sex psychology was delivered with great gravity and a final toss of the head which defied argument. Sarah began to rock herself to and fro in the rocking-chair, her hands and arms embracing her abdomen like a sufferer from colic.
Ti-tock. Ti-tock. Ti-tock.
Next door Free could be heard hammering. You could follow his every movement. Selecting a nail, holding it in position and then giving it a heavy clout and a series of minor ones.
“Mrs. Fairfield wouldn’t have it of course, but I know.”
Sarah was unmarried and, therefore, as an onlooker, saw most of the game!
“I know, I say. Known all along. If I was Jessie, I’d show him a thing or two. Keepin’ wake o’ nights for a chap like Hunter! And her could have half the single men hereabouts if she lifted ’er little finger. Silly thing!”
They were now embarked on a right good gossip. Littlejohn refilled and lit his pipe, stretched his legs and made himself comfortable. It wouldn’t do any harm to listen-in even if it did no good. The little cat, with a sudden impulse, leapt on his knees and settled down.
“Push ’er off, sir,” said Mrs. Free. “She’s always doin’ that. Come down now, Edna.”
“Edna?”
“Yes. Ronnie called her that. Said she’d a face like the barmaid at The Bird in Hand.”
The cat stuck its claws through the Inspector’s trousers right into his skin in its ecstacies.
Sarah was still in full spate.
“… Mrs. Fairfield was proper put-out when I told ’er that. ‘The girl’s missing one good catch as I know of,’ I sez. ‘That writer chap on Gallows Hill’s crazy about ’er, an’ well you know it.’”
“Who?” asked Littlejohn, now up to the neck in gossip and enjoying it like any old woman.
“Chap that has a bungalow on Gallows Hill. Long … no, Shortt … Shortt, that’s it. George Shortt. Well-known writer, they tell me. I never read books, so I can’t say, but they tell me he’s famous and makes thousands out of his novels every year.”
“Never heard of him!”
“You wouldn’t, not as George Shortt. Writes under a nomdiploom. Maude Temple, or something. A woman’s name! Doesn’t sound right, does it? Like a man dressin’ in woman’s clothes. But it earns him a fortune, so what’s the odds.”
Littlejohn remembered the books. Circulating libraries full of them, and customers clamouring for more. Strong romances where the hero didn’t ask for the woman, he took her …!
“Yes. George Shortt’s mad on Jessie. Followin’ her about with sheep’s eyes and bowin’ and smilin’ and lookin’ love-lorn whenever he sees her in the village. ‘She doesn’t know which side her bread’s buttered,’ I sez to Mrs. Fairfield. “Losin’ a chance like that for the sake of Johnny Hunter, who can’t make up his mind who he does want’.”
“But if she doesn’t love Mr. Shortt,” pleaded Mrs. Free.
The sex psychologist had an answer to that.
“Better take one who loves you than one who doesn’t. You know where you are then. She’d come to love ’im later. I told Mrs. Fairfield that straight. I’ve seen that ’appen more than once’t. Wasn’t born yesterday …”
Sarah rocked furiously and screwed her eyes violently.
“I wish I knew that Shortt to speak to. I’d give ’im a piece of my mind.”
She leaned forward confidentially and made her points strongly prodding her
left palm with a stiff bony forefinger.
“… They tell me in his books the men know what they want and take it. No arguin’ for his women. Just swept off their feet by force of passion.”
She threw out her arms in enthusiasm and flicked her eyelids furiously.
“Not that I read ’em. But them that do tell me it’s true. Pity ’e can’t take a dose of his own medicine and show Miss Jessie Fairfield wot’s wot.”
“So you don’t think Hunter’s in love with Jessie, then?” Littlejohn put it casually. He didn’t quite know why he asked the question, but somehow, at the time, it seemed important.
“Not a bit of it … Just showin’ Laura Cruft that there’s as good fish in the sea … And mark my words, mark my words, now that Laura’s free again, Jessie’s heart’s goin’ to be broke more than ever. She’d better take that Shortt chap while the going’s good … Johnny’ll be round Apple Tree Farm agen as sure as eggs is eggs …”
Free had finished his hammering and appeared in the house again. He looked as dazed and listless as ever.
“Hello, Sarah,” he muttered.
“Hello, Will. How are things? Nicely, I hope.”
The old man made no reply. He seemed to be looking for something and to have forgotten what it was.
“Could I have a cup o’ tea, mother? I feel that a good cup o’ tea might …”
“Certainly, Will. I’ll make one right away. Sit down, dad, do. Don’t keep on …”
The wretched couple looked helplessly at each other.
“Will you have a cup of tea, Inspector?… Sarah?”
“No, thank you, Mrs. Free. I must be going.”
“Is that clock right, Anne? I must be goin’ too! My bus is due. Mustn’t miss that or else …”
Sarah gathered her belongings and hurried off with hardly another word, pausing at the door only for a final warning.
“You’ll not tell a soul wot I said about Jessie Fairfield.”
Free, who had been wandering about with his hat on, removed it, revealing a livid weal where the brim had bitten into his forehead. He sat at the table dumbly waiting for his drink.
“Sure you won’t have a cup, Mr. Littlejohn?”
“Quite sure, thanks, Mrs. Free. I’ve spent enough time already and must be off.”
He shook hands with the pair of them.
As he gripped Littlejohn’s hand, Old Free suddenly flamed into life.
“I hope you soon find who done it. I wish to thank you … If only I could lay these hands on …”
The veins in his forehead stood out like cords and his face grew livid.
“There, there, dad. Don’t take on so. It’s over and done with past mendin’ now, dear. Revenge and bitterness won’t bring him back.”
Littlejohn left them comforting each other.
16.
THE WAX IMAGE
“The devil teacheth how to make pictures of wax, that by the roasting thereof, the persons that they bear the names of be continually melted by continual sickness.”
KING JAMES I.: Daemonology
P.C. COSTAIN cut across the fields to the old school house. It took five minutes less than going all the way by road to the front door.
He was on his way to confirm Johnny Hunter’s alibi with Jessie Fairfield.
The back door of the cottage gave right onto a small lawn and Costain made little noise as he approached. The door was open but there was nobody in the scullery in the rear of the place. Costain was just raising his fist to knock when a dull muttering caused him to pause with his fist in mid-air like a zealot giving the Communist salute.
The constable held his breath and listened. The sound he heard made the hair rise in the nape of his neck.
Somebody was reciting the Lord’s Prayer backwards!
You couldn’t teach Costain anything about witchcraft. Home in Ballaugh there were old women who could still tell the mainlanders a thing or two about blasting crops and making cows give blue milk. Many a time as a child he had been taken home and screamed himself to sleep after a session before the fire listening to his grandmother’s tales.
Gripping his thumbs between his first and second fingers, as taught by his mother long ago in such circumstances, Costain tiptoed in the direction of the incantation.
Mrs. Fairfield was kneeling in front of the living-room fire, slowly turning round and round in her fingers before the flames a small, cylindrical object. She was so preoccupied with the task in hand that the bobby was upon her and had snatched what she was holding before she knew he was there.
“Mrs. Fairfield! Mrs. Fairfield!! For shame!!!”
There was no mistaking what the wax candle, for such it was, was dolled-up to represent. The body was shapeless, but somebody had been to a lot of trouble to comb out the wick, stain and mould it. The hairdressing was that of Laura Cruft!
Costain, helmet and all, towered over Mrs. Fairfield like an avenging angel.
“What’s the meanin’ of all this …?”
He almost said mumbo-jumbo, but remembering his Grandmother Quilliam, changed his mind. He wasn’t sure whether or not there wasn’t something in it!
“What’s the meanin’ of all this diabolicalness?”
Mrs. Fairfield was on her knees still and now clasped her hands and stretched them out to Costain. It was like a cheap melodrama, except that Costain’s posture made it look a bit like a harlequinade.
He knew the woman by reputation. Very decent and well-liked normally, she was a Celt and tended to go off at the deep-end when hard pressed. She must be hard-pressed now!
“Get up … get up, this minute!” said Costain solemnly. He threw the candle in the heart of the fire and hastily gripped his thumbs in a simple form of the Cross again, as though the Devil might himself be still hovering around.
“What’s the meanin’ of all this? Don’t you know it’s ’ighly illegal to do those sort o’ things, you wicked woman, Mrs. Fairfield? I ought to arrest and take you in right away. I ought. Very serious offence is incantating and evil-eye. Severe punishments.”
He didn’t know a thing about it, but thought that now was the time to rub it in if he wanted a proper tale from the trembling woman he had caught in the very act.
She slowly rose to her feet, panting and rolling her eyes and not knowing where to look, like a child surprised in the midst of mischief.
“I didn’t do anythin’, Mr. Costain.”
“Oh yes, you did, Mrs. Fairfield, and well you know it. In the old days, where I come from, they used ter roll women caught doin’ wot you was just doin’ down Slieau Whuallian mountain in a barrel full o’ spikes.”
Mrs. Fairfield rolled her eyes again, twisted her fingers, and moaned aloud.
“Stop that noise! I’m willin’ to overlook it this once on account of your bein’ overwrought … But on one condition.”
“Anythin’, anythin’, Mr. Costain.”
“You can tell me what it’s all about, then. Also I want a full tale about your Jessie and Johnny Hunter. Where is Jessie, by the way?”
“I sent ’er down the village shopping. Mooning indoors doesn’t do her any good. She’s two days’ holiday from work for VE days and spends her time moping about. Got on my nerves, so I sent her out.”
“And started all that diabolicalism … I’m surprised at you, Mrs. Fairfield. A woman of your age, member o’ the church and widely respected locally. Can’t think how you could bring yourself to do such a thing.”
“If you’d all the troubles I have, you’d be at your wits’ end and try anything … It’s more than flesh and blood can bear. And her such a good girl and happy till all this come along.”
“Suppose we begin at the beginning.”
“I don’t know that I ought to tell you … Secrets between mother and daughter oughtn’t to be talked about to all and sundry.”
“You’d better, Mrs. Fairfield, you’d better. Else I’ll have to book you for witchcraft, and think of the disgrace that would be …”
>
The overwrought woman burst into tears and howled dismally.
“Come on, now. Suppose we talk it over quietly … What about a cup o’ tea, Mrs. Fairfield? Sort o’ lubricate us, eh?”
The woman was so relieved at the mention of tea that in next to no time they had a cup apiece in their hands, and Costain was blowing on his to cool it.
“Now what’s all this about, Mrs. F.?” said Costain, drying his moustache by raising his nether lip and drawing it tightly downwards over it.
Mrs. Fairfield put her cup firmly in her saucer and looked the constable fully in the face. She was a dark, good-looking, middle-aged woman, with high cheek bones, large, troubled, brown eyes and black hair shot with grey. Very well preserved, too, and it was rumoured that the local undertaker, Sam Stopford, himself a widower, was very sweet on her, but that, being fully centred on her two girls, she hadn’t any time for him.
“It’s my Jessie that’s troublin’ me. Always fond of Johnny Hunter she’s been and as happy as a queen when his feelings turned in her direction. Then, when all seemed settled and happy, he began to cool off.”
“Why, Mrs. Fairfield?”
“You know why as well as I do. So you needn’t pretend to be so innocent. It’s all over the village. Johnny was keen on Laura Cruft before he took up with Jessie. But young Free seemed to have cut him out.”
“Yes?”
“Must I go on with this, Joe Costain? I’m only tellin’ you what you know already.”
“Tell me again, then.”
“Well … Johnny seems to have taken up with Jessie just to show Laura he didn’t care. That’s all. And my girl’s breakin’ her heart about it. He can’t seem to get Laura out of his blood somehow. And now that Free’s out of the running Jessie’s that troubled. Can’t sleep o’ nights. She’ll be going into a decline if something’s not done.”
“So you was doing somethin’, Mrs. Fairfield. Enlistin’ the help of the evil one to do it, too. Shame on you!”
“You needn’t be so righteous about it, Joe Costain. You’ve never been a mother … Never had children of your own; so you don’t know what it feels like.”
A stricken look came into Costain’s eyes. This was rubbing it in with a vengeance! Still, he’d asked for it.
Outrage on Gallows Hill Page 14
