Death Comes to Cambers

by E. R. Punshon

  ‘That was Mr. Bowman – him that found her,’ Ray explained. ‘Miss Bowman’s his sister. Funny like it should be him found her.’

  ‘Why?’ Bobby asked quickly, remembering that this was the second time Mr. Bowman’s sister had been mentioned.

  ‘They say it’s on account of her Sir Albert left her ladyship,’ the young man answered; and Bobby remembered that his grandmother had talked vaguely about some unfortunate dispute between husband and wife, though she had not mentioned any names, and Bobby had not been greatly interested at the time.

  But now he thought it might be as well to bear the fact in mind, even though very likely it was only one of hundreds having no connection with what had happened. Also he was beginning to think that Ray Hardy was showing even more distress and excitement than even so dreadful a tragedy would appear to warrant – as well as a somewhat odd desire to emphasize that neither he nor anyone on the farm knew anything of what had happened till Mr. Bowman came to tell them. Since there was no reason to suppose they had had any means of being aware of it, why was the young man so eager to protest their ignorance? But no doubt allowance had to be made for the excitement and general disturbance produced in him by such an event; very likely the shock had made him loquacious and his flow of talk was merely his way of reacting to it.

  On the point of moving on again, Bobby gave this patch of ground one final glance as he thought how he would have measured, mapped, described it in every detail down to the last tuft of grass, the last buttercup or daisy, had the case been his, and then in one of those tufts of long lank damp grass he caught sight of something black and shining. He stepped forward quickly, and, seeing that it was a fountain-pen, looked at it attentively, without at first touching it. Then with extreme care, using his handkerchief so as to avoid leaving finger-prints himself and so confusing any that might be already on its polished surface, he picked it up. It was of a well-known and expensive make, and it was mounted in gold, as if intended for purchase as a Christmas or birthday gift.

  ‘Someone must have dropped it,’ observed Ray, much more impressed than he had been by the discovered match-stalk, and even a little envious that such a find had not been made by him. ‘I wonder who?’

  Bobby wondered, too, as he busied himself hurriedly building up a tiny pyramid of small stones to mark the exact spot where the pen had lain.

  CHAPTER 3

  PRIEST AND SCIENTIST

  Round the shed in the middle of the field, a temporary wooden building with a corrugated-iron roof, a small crowd had collected, for already the news of a tragedy so startling, so incredible indeed, had spread through the neighbourhood, as the tale of an accident that has happened will run up and down a crowded street. From all sides people were hurrying to hear and see for themselves, to gape and gossip and deny and wonder. Among them, following a converging path to that which Bobby and Ray Hardy were pursuing, was a tall, thin, long-legged, long-armed personage in clerical attire, with a large, round, almost perfectly bald head that gave him an odd, and even slightly grotesque, appearance.

  ‘There’s vicar,’ Ray said. ‘He’ll call it a judgement, same as he said in his sermon there would be.’

  ‘Mr. Andrews?’ Bobby asked, for though he had not attended the church during his stay, and had never chanced to meet the vicar, he had heard a good deal about him and knew his name. It was, indeed, a name that had acquired some notoriety, for more than once the Anglo-Catholic fervour of its bearer had carried it into the papers – as, for example, when he had attempted to exclude from his church any woman not obeying St. Paul’s injunction to keep the head covered, or when he had wished to refuse communion to other women guilty of any kind of ‘make-up’.

  Then, too, he had quarrelled with the bishop of the diocese over some question of vestments, and in the same connection had publicly identified the diocesan chancellor with Antichrist, though this he had subsequently been persuaded to withdraw on the ground, not of inaccuracy, but of Christian charity. But if this fanaticism of his was more than a little embarrassing to his ecclesiastical superiors, and if at times it excited general ridicule, none the less his sincerity and the austerity of his life made him universally respected, even by those who found his zeal most trying. There were even, probably unfounded, stories current that he kept a private scourge for not infrequent use, and that he always wore a hair shirt – an article not too easy, perhaps, to procure in these days; and it was certainly true that he smoked even to excess four days a week, and on three days, Sundays, Wednesdays and Fridays, abstained entirely – on Sundays because he hadn’t the time, on Wednesdays and Fridays because they were fast-days. It was, he explained, his way of taming the natural man by encouraging him to take full liberty and licence and then checking him abruptly.

  ‘If I never touched tobacco,’ he would explain, ‘I should never miss it. I encourage the habit till it thinks it has a complete hold, and then I break off short. Then I know I am master, and I know I am depriving myself of something I really miss.’

  It was with interest, then, that Bobby watched the quaint, ungainly figure running towards them – the long arms flapping, as it were, in the air; the long shambling legs, equally out of proportion to the short squat body; the big hairless face and head thrust forward on a long thin neck. Bobby found himself oddly reminded of a vulture flapping its way along the ground, and half expected to see the priest soar into the air in sudden flight. As they drew nearer to each other he was able to note, too, how little fleshiness that round face showed, how tightly drawn was the skin over the bony framework, how brightly shone and glittered the prominent eyes. To Ray Bobby said, as they slackened pace to allow the new-comer to overtake them: ‘A judgement? Why a judgement? What for?’

  ‘It was in his sermon,’ Ray explained. ‘He thought Eddy Dene was trying to prove the Bible wrong, and that was blasphemy and suchlike. He’s preached about it before, only not so strong; and Lady Cambers was there, and sat all through, just listening. A judgement he said, and looked straight at her, and she just listened, quiet as you like.’

  The vicar was close to them now, those long shambling legs of his carrying him over the ground at an astonishing rate. In one hand he held a small leather case. He made no pause as he overtook them, but rushed whirling by, calling out, but without waiting for an answer, as he fled past: ‘Is there time still?’

  ‘What’s he mean?’ Bobby asked, and Ray explained: ‘Holy Communion. He’s got it with him; he always has it ready in case. Anything he’ll do rather than let you die without. One winter he ran miles through the snow, when it was too deep for a car, so he could get to Hicks’s, just because he heard Mrs. Hicks was dying – and she wasn’t neither, only just the flu and a drop more gin than usual. Eddy Dene says he’s cracked. Eddy Dene says truth’s truth, and if truth and the Bible don’t hit it, so much the worse for the Bible. So vicar – he excommunicated him.’ Ray chuckled. ‘A fat lot Eddy cared, never having been near church since they christened him – and then he squalled his hardest all the time. But some said vicar meant to excommunicate Lady Cambers too, and she was fair upset about it.’

  Bobby made no comment. He had heard before, in a vague, confused sort of way, that the archaeological investigations being carried out by young Eddy Dene, with the encouragement and under the patronage of Lady Cambers, had much disturbed the worthy vicar, and had been roundly denounced by him from the pulpit. He wondered if by any bizarre possibility this dispute was connected with the terrible tragedy that had just occurred.

  They had reached the shed now. At the door stood Jordan, the local sergeant of police, his uniform evidently somewhat hastily assumed, using all his endeavour for the moment to keep people from crowding into the shed. But his deference to local notabilities, the frequent distracting calls on his attention, his own state of general bewilderment and confusion, so that even yet he could hardly believe what had happened, prevented this endeavour from being very successful. The interior of the shed was, indeed, crowded almost
to suffocation with people who had little other excuse than curiosity for their presence.

  The latest addition to the group was Mr. Andrews, for Sergeant Jordan, who had sung in a choir, man and boy, for thirty years, would never have dreamed of trying to exclude the vicar of the parish. Now Jordan was endeavouring to make up for what he felt had been a certain laxity by vehemently exhorting those still without to take forthwith their departure.

  ‘What do you want?’ he was demanding. ‘None of you got any work to do to-day? Trespassers, you are, all of you – trespassing and trapesing. Now then, be off, all of you.’

  But no one took much notice, and Bobby, pushing through the little crowd of spectators, said to him: ‘I’ve been staying the week-end at Lady Cambers’s place. They’ve only just found out she wasn’t in her room. Her bed’s not been slept in.’ He added: ‘My name’s Owen. I’m a sergeant in the Metropolitan Police, attached to the C.I.D., Scotland Yard.’

  He offered his card as he spoke, and Jordan studied it with interest, still more bewildered at finding that one of the guests at the big house he had from earliest youth regarded with deepest awe and reverence and respect was also a brother-sergeant of police. A confusing world it had become, he reflected sadly; and aloud he said: ‘Well, now then, pleased to meet you, I’m sure. I’ve sent for Colonel Lawson and doctor, too, but they aren’t here yet, either of ’em.’

  ‘If there’s anything I can do to help,’ Bobby suggested, ‘I’d be only too glad.’

  ‘Better wait till the Colonel gets here, and then you could ask him,’ Jordan answered, and Bobby nodded and said that would be best no doubt, and walked past into the shed with such an air of being, so to say, one of the force, that Jordan never even thought of trying to stop him, but resumed instead his ineffective exhortations to the rapidly swelling crowd outside to be gone about their own affairs they all thought so much less interesting than what was happening here.

  Within the shed the body of the murdered woman lay on a table in the middle of the room. Someone, with some idea of doing it reverence, had covered it with a large cloth that had been lying about. A collection of what Bobby recognized as flint implements of the early Stone Age had been hurriedly tumbled from the table, on which they had been carefully ranged in ordered sequence, to the floor to make room for the body. Mingled with them, in the same untidy heap, were a number of fossils, all pushed together out of the way. The only other furniture of the room, besides this table, consisted of a small oil stove, a couple of chairs, one or two packing-cases, some rough shelving round the walls. On these shelves stood, not too tidily, a few pieces of crockery, various tools, a camera and other photographic apparatus, and a few similar objects. Evidently a workroom, Bobby told himself. Lying on one of the packing-cases was Lady Cambers’s hand-bag, which he recognized at once. It had been picked up near her body, and contained her handkerchief, glasses, a pencil, a small mirror, and various other trifling objects of everyday use, including a few shillings in small change. On the same packing-case lay a small suit-case that Bobby recognized as also her property. It had her initials on it, and Bobby wondered why she should have taken it with her on this strange midnight expedition that had ended so tragically. He went across to it, and saw that it was quite empty, and again he wondered what object it had been meant to serve. One of the bystanders, seeing him looking at it, said: ‘It was just by her – empty like that.’

  ‘Wasn’t there anything in it?’ asked another bystander, either for confirmation or for want of something to say.

  ‘Empty just as it is now,’ repeated the other.

  Near-by, bending over the confused heap of fossils, flints, and so on that had been tumbled so unceremoniously from the table, was a smooth-faced youngster, apparently about twenty-two or three. He said ruefully: ‘It’s going to be a job to get them straight again.’

  From the other side of the room someone said loudly: ‘You’ve no call to be thinking of that, Eddy Dene, with her ladyship lying there and all.’

  The vicar, who had been engaged in silent devotion over the dead body, took up the rebuke.

  ‘No, indeed, Dene,’ he said sharply, ‘this is no time to be thinking of such things.’

  Dene straightened himself, and from half-shut eyes looked round with a gentle, deprecatory smile. He was not a good-looking lad, for his features were irregular and even insignificant, though he had a fine lofty forehead, and against a fair complexion, with little trace as yet of beard or moustache, and under fair eyebrows, a pair of dark and flashing eyes glowed with unexpected and unusual fire. There was a certain chubbiness, too, about his features, a suggestion of youthfulness and inexperience, that again made curious contrast with the haughty and dominating gaze now veiled beneath his half-closed eyes. In height he was below the average, but of a strong, sturdy build, with long arms terminating in somewhat disproportionately small hands that had slender, sensitive-looking fingers. Looking at the lower part of his face, one might have been inclined to dismiss him as a commonplace, rather spoilt, and petulant youth. That broad forehead and those darkly brilliant eyes suggested another and a different personality. He said to Mr. Andrews, a little in the manner of one offering excuses though not much used to such an exercise: ‘Oh, well, it’s my work, you know. I’ve got to think of my work, and thinking of it won’t hurt her now, poor soul, will it?’

  ‘Your work, as you call it, had an evil aim – a blasphemous aim,’ the vicar retorted, loudly and harshly, so that the low murmur of other voices in the shed was hushed. ‘A judgement has been given.’ The priest’s eyes lighted up fiercely, the intense emotion of the man, his enormous conviction, lent to them fire, and to his voice a vibrant, penetrating quality. ‘It was a blasphemy you planned,’ he said, ‘and here’s the end.’

  Eddy Dene moved forward. He looked quite good-humoured still, his easy assurance an odd contrast to the other’s intense, emotional fervour. As well as the crowded condition of the room permitted, the rest of those present drew back, so as to allow the chubby-faced Eddy Dene, the emaciated priest, to face each, other. Dene said slowly, his broad brow puckered now as with a certain anxiety: ‘I dare say that’s right about this being the end. I don’t know where the money’s to come from now. That may put a stopper to the whole show. Only, why a judgement? Judgement? Why? Whose judgement?’ he asked with a sudden, unexpected emphasis that was in curious contrast to his former easy assurance.

  Into Bobby’s mind there flashed the thought that the tone and phrasing were almost those of an accusation, and he even had the impression that to others in the room the same idea had occurred. Surely it could not be possible that Dene suspected the vicar of this atrocious and apparently purposeless murder? Yet it was almost in an attitude, and with an air, of mutual accusation that the two men faced each other. And then Bobby told himself that that was absurd, that it was only their mutual dislike and suspicion breaking out: the age-long conflict of the priest and the scientist, both right and both wrong, the one mistrusting too much reason, and daring to doubt where truth may lead, the other mistrusting too much faith, and daring to doubt where love might go; both so tremendously right, so presumptuously wrong.

  But then Eddy’s expression changed. He shrugged his shoulders as if dismissing an idea that had indeed crossed his mind for an instant, but that he now clearly saw to be merely foolish.

  ‘Oh, well,’ he said, ‘that sermon of yours has turned out quite prophetic, and, if it is a judgement, it’s done for me all right. Looks like the end of my job here.’

  ‘Hard luck, Eddy,’ someone called.

  ‘I hoped a lot from it,’ Eddy said musingly. ‘It might have meant a lot if I could have gone through with it. And now I shan’t even stand a show with the American bloke, either – done in all round, I am.’ He looked again at the stern-faced vicar. ‘Oh, it’s a judgement all right,’ he said, ‘but don’t go saying it was one on her – that’s a dirty thing to say.’

  ‘In the presence of the dead, cut off without w
arning,’ began the vicar, ‘it is not seemly...’

  But then the door opened, and a tall military-looking man came in, followed by two or three others. Though he had never seen him before, Bobby guessed at once that this new-comer was Colonel Lawson, head of the county police.

  ‘What are all these people doing here?’ demanded the colonel angrily. ‘Good Lord, it might be a public meeting. Sergeant, don’t you know better than to let this crowd in? Clear everyone out immediately.’

  CHAPTER 4

  THE TIME QUESTION

  The authoritative manner, the emphatic voice, of Colonel Lawson had immediate effect, and those who had a little before crowded so eagerly into the shed began now almost as eagerly to file out again, sternly watched by Sergeant Jordan, who tried to atone for his previous laxity by endeavouring to look as fierce as the colonel and by calling loudly, in the best imitation of the military voice he could manage: ‘Pass along there, please. Pass along now.’

  The vicar seemed at first inclined to linger. There were duties he thought should be performed, rites to be carried out. But Colonel Lawson, though careful to show the punctilious respect due from one official force to another, soon got rid of him, and then turned sharply upon Eddy Dene, who had again become absorbed in his collection of stone implements and fossils in their confusion on the floor.

  ‘Now, you, sir,’ the colonel rasped out. ‘You heard what I said?’

  Eddy looked up mildly.

  ‘Well, it’s my shed, you know,’ he remarked. ‘They’ve made hay of my stuff, as it is.’

  ‘Your shed? I thought this was Mr. Hardy’s land?’ the colonel said sharply.

  ‘But my shed,’ Eddy answered. ‘Lady Cambers got a lease of it in my name so we shouldn’t run any risk of being disturbed. Lord knows what’ll happen now, or where any more money for research is to come from!’ He added: ‘It’ll be a week’s work at least to get my stuff straight again.’