Murder in the Mill-Race

by E. C. R. Lorac

  “Did she talk to you about her own affairs, sir? Her family and connections, her savings and business dealings and so forth?”

  “Savings? She can’t have saved much, poor soul. I told Etheldreda Ridding she’d got her pound of flesh all right. Not that Sister ever mentioned money to me. She’d got her own rigid code, you know. You couldn’t get past it. In actual fact she never talked to me about her own affairs. Never got personal. The fact was, she’d got a pose as well as a code. She was other-worldly. That’s how she saw it. I’d say, in confidence, she was a bit simple and a good bit of a snob. I don’t say that unkindly, but I suppose her origins were pretty humble. That’s guesswork, because she never told me, but I do believe that she put great store on being talked to confidentially by Lady Ridding. So Sister lived up to it, part mystic, part perfect lady. No harm in it. She didn’t have much in the way of luxury, God knows.”

  “But wasn’t there another side to her, sir?” asked Macdonald. “Not mystic, not ascetic, not perfect lady. Isn’t it true that she could set malicious gossip in train, too?”

  “Maybe. I’ve never known a woman who didn’t,” said the old man tartly. “No one’s ever repeated gossip to me. It’s a thing I can’t abide, and if anyone tried tale-bearing about Sister Monica, I dealt with them in the only way I know. Told them to hold their tongues. Maybe she did chatter, but she wasn’t malicious. If she said a thing she thought it was true.” He paused, his face working unhappily. “Of course I know what you mean,” he admitted. “She’d turned people against her. She’d got a sort of reformer’s bug into her head. You try reforming a village and see how popular you are. Villages are all alike, made up of human beings who love and lie, who’re unselfish one minute and self-seeking the next, w ho’ re faithful one day and fornicators the next. Human nature’s a mixed bag. I’ve lived thirty years in this village and I don’t expect too much of anybody. I’ve too much sense.”

  “Wouldn’t you agree that if would-be reformers are too zealous they make enemies, sir?”

  “Of course they do. We all make enemies. I’ve made plenty myself. I’m a damned cantankerous old man and I know it. But when you make enemies in a village like this, you don’t murder one another. It was that fool of a sergeant who started this murder idea. Damned nonsense. I’m willing to admit anything within the bounds of reasonable possibility. I’ll admit Sister Monica may have taken to the brandy bottle, improbable though it seems. And if she did, you’ve got a logical explanation of the way she behaved and of the fact she fell clown, knocked herself silly, and rolled into the mill-stream.”

  The old man was working himself up into a temper, as old men do, and Macdonald changed the angle of his questions. “Getting back to Gramarye, sir. Can you tell me anything about Hannah Barrow?”

  “Hannah? She’s been there for twenty years or more. I can tell you she’s a hard worker, a conscientious children’s nurse, and an ignorant, superstitious woman. Not that that made any difference to her work. She’s one of the sort who’ll work till they drop. Not like the youngsters of today, always out for their own enjoyment.”

  “Do you know where she came from?”

  “Came from? She’s Devon-bred. I think Sister Monica got her by recommendation from some home or other. She was a domestic to start with, and they took to calling her ‘Nurse’ when she was promoted. No training, of course: no education. Just got a knack of managing children. She’s been invaluable.”

  “You don’t remember what sort of home she came from?”

  “I never asked. Not my business. May have got landed in trouble —Sister Monica always liked reforming people. Makes me laugh to think of reforming Hannah. Ugly little cuss she was when she came and couldn’t say boo to a goose.” He cocked an eye at Macdonald. “Not thinking Hannah took a coal hammer and knocked Sister Monica over the head, are you? Why not say I did it?—it’d make just as much sense. Hannah worshipped Sister Monica. She’d have cut off her own hands rather than cause Sister any distress.” He stirred fretfully in his seat. “I expect you know how children’s homes are run these days. Trained nurses, trained psychologists, trained welfare officers, trained social reformers, trained nursery teachers. Gramarye was run in the main by two women who’d had about as little training as women can have: they ran it by common sense, rule of thumb, and hard work: two women of humble origin, one of whom was nearly illiterate. But they did the job. And after a quarter of a century detectives come along and suggest one of those women was murdered and the other murdered her. I don’t want to be offensive to you personally, Inspector: you strike me as a fellow with plenty of common sense, but melodrama’s never been in my line. We’re commonplace folk in this village.”

  “Would you really have described Miss Monica Torrington as a commonplace person, sir?”

  “Under the uniform and the mumbo-jumbo, yes. She played a part, but considering how hard she worked and how little relaxation she had, it wasn’t surprising she put on a few frills and pretensions.” The old man yawned, and Macdonald got up to go. “You’re tired, sir.”

  “I’m damn tired, Inspector. Not used to talking so much. And you’ve given me a few knocks. I thought I knew our Sister Monica, saw through the pious trappings to the human being underneath. Now you tell me she’d taken to drink. I ought to have spotted it. I didn’t. I’m an old fool and you’re justified in telling me so.”

  “I didn’t say that she’d taken to drink, sir; I said the analyst found traces of alcohol in her organs. We don’t know at all in what circumstances it was taken, and there was no sign at all that she was an addict. The reverse is true. But as a detective, I can’t help being aware that a stiff dose of alcohol, taken by one unaccustomed to it, may have had some bearing on her death.”

  “And what about the bottle of brandy, Chief Inspector? You say it’s no longer there. It was kept under lock and key, and whatever defects Sister Monica may have had, carelessness and forgetfulness were not among them. Did you find her keys, by the way?”

  “Yes, sir. Her keys were in the pocket of her uniform cloak when her body was found.”

  “That’s clear enough, isn’t it?” growled old Brown.

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  It was after nine o’clock that evening when Macdonald got his car out, saying to Reeves: “There’s a rhyme to the effect that a policeman’s lot is not a happy one. I’ve always maintained that there are good points about the job, and we’re going to prove it this evening. Hop in, Pete.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “We’re taking a couple of hours off duty, and we’re going to drive to the highest point of Exmoor and see the county of Devon from sea to sea: from Bideford Bay in the north to the Exeter gap in the south. It’s as near the summer solstice as makes no difference, and we’ll see a midsummer evening over Exmoor.”

  “Suits me,” said Reeves.

  Macdonald turned northwards; they drove at first through deep lanes with high hedge banks, warm and fragrant with the incense of midsummer, while already tall foxgloves flowered in serried ranks and the lush green foliage of oak and beech nearly met overhead.

  Then the hedge banks dwindled away and the bonnet of the car tilted to an unaccustomed angle as they mounted to the moor. White owls swept across the road, and as they drove on a great hawk flew in front of them and came back again and again as though to protest against their intrusion into his territory. The northwestern sky was still lambent, glowing with pale golden light, and when they reached the summit of the rough road the very air seemed drenched with the aftermath of sunset. Macdonald pulled the car on to the rough verge, and they got out and walked over close turf, starred with flowers and tangle of blaeberries, until they reached a ridge where two mounds stood out against the sky.

  “Long barrows,” said Macdonald; “your ancestors and mine, maybe. A good spot to be buried.”

  Reeves stood and stared; some moorland ponies stared back and then bolted in a wild stampede of flying hooves and manes and tails. To the far west, Lundy Isla
nd hung like a cloud on the horizon; Bideford Bay was one great curve of reflected light from Hartland to Morte. To the north the head of the Lynn Valley showed a sinuous green among the dark green of heather. Turning about, Reeves looked beyond and below the moor to a chequer of farmland and woodland, the rich earth of south Devon spread out to the river Exe and the distant hills behind Exmouth. Having stared his fill, he sat down beside Macdonald, who was gazing out to Hartland and remembering the coombes that cleft that rocky coast—Welcombe, Marsland Mouth, Coombe Valley, and Moorwinstow.

  “Well, thanks for this,” said Reeves as he gazed at the first white pinprick of starlight. “I shan’t forget it in a hurry.”

  They sat in silence and listened to the call of the moorland birds and watched kestrels hovering until the light faded and the northern sky paled, misted to faint amethyst and then to lilac-grey. Reeves lav on his back and watched the stars strengthen, while his mind inevitably went back to the problem they had come to solve. It wasn’t that he didn’t value this high solitude of air and sky and distant sea, but an active mind cannot easily ignore a present problem. Sensuously he was aware of near bird call and far constellation, of fragrance and the chill of evening air, of the reflection of headland lights flashing out from hidden lighthouses: intelligently he was aware of a conundrum in which human motives made a crisscross of pattern, moving inevitably to the cold rush of the millrace.

  They stayed there for a long time, each busy with his own thoughts, the smoke of Reeves’s cigarettes mingling with the mellower smoke of Macdonald’s pipe, while rustles in heather and bracken told of unseen small beasts busy on nocturnal occasions, and the last bird call died away in sleepy cuck-cuckings, save for the mournful hoot of owls. When Macdonald got up and stretched himself, Reeves could see his tall straight figure like a void against a sky which was still vaguely pale, though myriad pin points and scintillas of golden starlight quivered from horizon to horizon. Reeves got up and stretched, too, and found his coat was misted with dew.

  “You can see it’s round when you’re at sea, but you don’t often see it’s round when you’re on land,” he said.

  Macdonald considered the cryptic phrase and turned slowly the full three hundred and sixty degrees. They were so high above the rest of the moorland that they had their own uninterrupted circle of horizon. “There’s something satisfying about a full circle,” he said. “It seems to settle the infinity argument. This is where we go back, in time as well as in space. I’m going to drop you about half a mile from the mill. I shall go on up to the top and walk down through the park. We will each follow our own devices and discuss results when we get home. There’s a moon for you—like a dinted green cheese.”

  They went back to the car, turned the headlights on, and bumped down the steep descent, lighting up an occasional white owl, and once a hawk flew in the beam of the head lamps, every pinion displayed in its great wingspread. Back into the tunnel of the lane they drove, and on till the first thatch gleamed in the moonlight at the bottom of the village street. Here Reeves got out and Macdonald drove on up the hill to the little plateau between inn and Manor and church. Every south-facing wall was white in the moonlight, white as milk; every thatch gleamed with the faintest tinge of gold on its well-combed surface, and beneath the eaves the shadows were purple-black.

  CHAPTER XI

  Macdonald walked across the village green to the entrance gates which closed the drive of Gramarye. They were tall wooden gates and they were bolted on the inside. Having noted their solidity, Macdonald put his hands on the top of the gates, pulled himself up, and got over the top without any difficulty at all. The drive was dark, shaded by ilex trees, and the Chief Inspector walked silently along the tunnel of gloom until he could see the garden front of die old stone house. It looked very beautiful and serene in the moonbeams, its mullions and flat Tudor archways showing clear in the witching light. Every window was closed, despite the warmth of the midsummer night, and the narrow leaded casements had a dark, secret look. The sunk lawn was smooth and white now, but anybody leaving the house could get immediately into the shadow of clipped shrubs and hedges. The conditions tonight, Macdonald pondered, were the same as on the night when Monica Emily Torrington had walked down to the mill, and when Dr. Ferens had driven up the village street to the Dower House.

  Leaving the drive by the gate he and Reeves had used that afternoon, Macdonald moved on into the park. He paused after he had descended a hundred yards of the steep declivity. To his right, the scarp rose sharply to the line of the village street, the houses hidden by the trees on the slopes. To his left, the ground fell away steeply to river level, so steeply that it was probable that if anybody took a false step and slipped from the path he would roll helplessly down the long bank, faster and faster, till he reached the bottom. Despite the fact that he was not many yards away from the village street, no houses were within sight. Away and below, across the river, woods banked darkly, and beyond them again the ridge of the distant moorland showed against the sky. It was midnight, but it wasn’t dark. It wouldn’t be dark all night, thought Macdonald. Everything was plain to see, though the colours of day had faded out. White and black, or grey and lilac, the great sweep of parkland and woodland was like an acquatint, its half tones treated with a wash of some faint tertiary colour which blurred some of the outlines but never hid the detail.

  Macdonald walked on; the path was straight now and offered no cover: anyone walking either up or down could be seen clearly and would have no means of concealment. He stood still for a while and listened; the only sound came faintly from far below, the perpetual plash of water over the weir. Macdonald had gym shoes on, for he found they were quieter than any other form of footwear and gave better foothold on a slope. He picked up a small stone and tossed it. As he expected, he got an echo from the scarp to his right. Every sound was amplified on this path. “She had acute hearing,” he pondered to himself. (The conscientious Peel had noted this down.) “Even the rustle of a cotton frock would sound loud here. Surely no one would have risked following her down this path. She would have heard them, and once she had turned, she would have seen them.”

  He walked on, thinking hard. “She must have gone to meet somebody. If she had only been walking for the pleasure of a walk in the moonlight, or to induce some sort of semi-hysterical trance, she wouldn’t have gone on through that last gate to the workaday jumble of Mill House and sawmill and generating station. And if you wanted to meet someone, surely you wouldn’t choose to meet them on this path. It’s not wide enough for two people to walk abreast without fear of slipping; it’s steep and toilsome, and not particularly safe. If she went to meet somebody, she’d have chosen level ground at the top or level ground at the bottom.”

  He walked on, slowly and silently, down to the five-barred gate which shut off the park from the level space by the river. There were trees overhanging the path here, and a big elder tree, covered with flowers, looked fairylike in the moonlight. Macdonald wanted to know what Reeves was up to. He would be down there somewhere, near the bridge, watching and listening, as Macdonald himself had been watching and listening. Reeves would be quite capable of doing a practical experiment to discover what happened to a person who tripped up on the bridge, and Macdonald thought it not improbable that one or other of them would end up in the millstream, the betting being that he (Macdonald) would have to swim for it. The fact that Reeves was there, unseen and unheard, but certainly watchful, acted as a sort of stimulant, and Macdonald began to test his memory about the approach to the bridge, recollecting what there was in the way of cover where an assailant might hide. There was an open space of level ground on either side of the bridge, and while he stood visualising this, Macdonald suddenly thought: “Being Reeves, he’ll probably get under the bridge somehow. It’s a wooden bridge and there must be beams of some sort to act as stays: it’s too wide a span to have no supports. If somebody grabbed your ankle or got a crook round your leg while you were on the bridge, the resu
lt might make hay of all our arguments about what happens when you go at the knees. Well, here’s his chance for a demonstration.”

  He had just put out his hand to loosen the chain on the gate when he caught a sound on the farther side of the stream. It was a slight clatter, as though a stick had fallen on cobbles. Macdonald drew back into the shadows: he could see right across the bridge and on to the moonlit space beyond it. The path which ran between the Mill House and the farm was in black shadow, and it was from here that the sound had come, as though someone coming towards the bridge from the village street had knocked a stick down. Macdonald’s first thought was: “That wasn’t Reeves.” Reeves had the eyes of a cat, and a cat’s neatness in avoiding obstacles. A moment later a man moved out of the shadows between the houses and into the moonlight. He walked quietly on to the bridge and Macdonald saw who it was—Sanderson, the bailiff. He was dressed in singlet and shorts and he was very obvious in the moonlight. Behind, in the shadows, was another man, unidentifiable in the gloom. Whatever Macdonald anticipated, the next event took him entirely by surprise. Sanderson measured his length on the bridge, if not with a resounding crash, with a thud which was not far removed from a bang. Then his big form rolled over and fell in the water with a smack and a splash which made a great deal more noise than Macdonald would have believed possible. Immediately there was an outburst of barking from the dog in Venner’s house, and the calves in the nearby byre bawled their protest at being wakened from sleep.

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