The Case of the Headless Jesuit

by George Bellairs

  They passed through two hamlets and then the outskirts of Cobbold began to appear. The church had been visible almost the whole way from Thorncastle, gradually growing larger and larger as they approached, its tall tower, with four slim pinnacles, one at each corner, and crooked iron weathercock sharply etched on the skyline. They made straight for the police station, where Pennyquick had been advised by telephone to await them.

  The police-house was a double-fronted cottage standing back in its own garden. Beside the wrought-iron gate, a wooden hoarding covered with old posters. Recruiting appeals, parish notices, official orders … “Swine Fever …” “Quarter Sessions …” and, alien and frivolous: “Whist Drive and Dance … Christmas Eve … Village Hall … Admission 1/–.”

  P.C. Pennyquick had been in the village almost all his constabulary life. At one time, the fecundity of Mrs. Pennyquick had threatened to dislodge him, for she bore him four daughters in rapid succession and there were only two bedrooms. The problem was solved, however, by the building of a small wing, holding an extra bedroom, with a cell on the ground floor. The latter was used for garden tools, produce, and coal, greatly to the benefit of local malefactors, mainly drunks and poachers, whom the constable took home or cautioned rather than move his implements and fuel. Nobody seemed to bother and crime was not increased by the arrangement.

  The bobby greeted his superiors on the doorstep. He had one of the front rooms for an office and had been sitting at the window on the look-out. The visitors entered. The room was really Mrs. Pennyquick’s parlour, used only for solemn police or social occasions. When the latter took place the constabulary impedimenta, papers, thick ink, corroded pens, huge charge-book and police notices, were piled on the official table and carted into the cell.

  Pennyquick was tall, bulky and bald. There was a cheerful roundness about him; large, round, kindly, slightly protruding blue eyes, round snub nose, strong round chin, all in a solid, round, red face with a heavy grey moustache sprouting from the upper lip.

  Percival was a man of tact. Pennyquick was normally overawed by the visits of his Superintendent. It wouldn’t do to overdo it. So Percival, saying he had a call to make elsewhere, left the Scotland Yard men with the constable.

  “I’m very put-out about all this, sir,” said Pennyquick apologetically. “Looks as if I’m not doin’ me duty properly. Plucock, our man from Carstonwood, was by way o’ being a pal of mine, too. If I could ’ave found out who killed him, maybe I’d have stopped the second murder. As it is …”

  The bobby’s face was a study in gloom and humiliation.

  “You can’t take the blame for either crime, Pennyquick,” said Littlejohn. He was sitting in a cold, old-fashioned leather armchair with an antimacassar on the back of it.

  “No. But …”

  His further doubts were silenced by the entrance of his wife bearing a tray. She was a suitable partner for her husband. Large, round, comfortable and quiet. She cast a proud look at her man. Strange for such a pacific and kindly soul, she loved crime pictures at the Thorncastle cinema, which she visited once a week religiously. And now, here was a real murder—nay, two!—in the village and her Andrew was going to solve them. She was hot from brewing tea and warming pastries, her face shone, and she performed the feat of balancing the tray on one hand and capturing an errant lock of hair and skilfully imprisoning it in a bun at the back of her head with the other. From the room behind came the chatter of voices. All the girls were at home for the holidays and the house seemed to teem with them.

  “Thought, maybe, the gentlemen would like a cup o’ tea and a mince tart,” she said to her husband, questioningly, waiting for the royal assent.

  “Of course, luv,” said Pennyquick.

  The Law rose, took the tray, passed a huge paw over it like a conjurer about to make it all vanish.

  “’Ome made,” he said proudly.

  “That’s very nice of you, Mrs. Pennyquick,” said Littlejohn.

  The good lady was delighted. She had been wrestling with a moral problem. On the films the detectives always seemed to drink beer at bars.… The advice of two of her girls, one a student at the Academy of Music in London, another a mannequin at Thorncastle, had decided her. They had assured her that detectives, like the rest of folk, would enjoy her mince tarts.…

  But Mrs. Pennyquick, having resigned the commissariat to her man, was making clucking noises over Cromwell.

  “Whatever ’ave you been doin’ to yourself?” she asked anxiously, indicating the protuberance on his head. Maybe, “they”—the criminals—had already been “at it”, as shown recently in Soho After Midnight at the Palace, Thorncastle.

  Cromwell blushed.

  “Oh, it’s nothing.… Bumped my head on a beam in the bedroom at the hotel. They oughtn’t to have low beams in bedrooms.…”

  “No, they oughtn’t, sir. You’re right.…”

  And she scuttered out, only to return bearing aloft on the end of her index a large blob of vaseline, with which she gently anointed Cromwell’s lump.

  “It’s all right, Mrs. Pennyquick.… Don’t bother … I’ll be all right.…”

  The good lady, having performed her ministrations, executed a diminutive curtsy and vanished to tell the girls all about it. Sounds of pity rose from the adjacent room.

  Pennyquick ate two mince pies. It was like feeding the elephant at the zoo. He placed them solemnly in his mouth, chewed twice, and the load vanished and was assimilated without a further move. Then, he elevated his moustache with his forefinger and drank his tea. As a rule, he used a “moustache” cup, the mouth of which held a miniature porcelain bridge to hold his whiskers, but, on state occasions, this did not appear.

  “The whole thing baffles me …” he said, as if to his conscience.

  “We must do what we can together. I gather that there’s not a sign or a theory about what or who caused Plucock’s death.”

  “No, sir. I can’t think it ’ud be a poacher. Besides, it was broad daylight. I’d seen Plucock the afternoon before. We used to meet on our bikes where our beats crossed, you see. If there’d been anything worrying ’im, he’d ’ave told me. We used to exchange information, of course. A nice chap, too. If only …”

  Pennyquick stretched out his huge hands, with fingers like large bananas, and made strangling movements.

  “I believe Mr. Salter’s been in the village some time.”

  “Yes, sir. More than a week. Staying with Mrs. Alveston over Christmas. Now that’s a bit of a mystery to me, too. I grant you, sir, she was ’is old nurse, but why should a young chap like Mr. Granville, with all his friends and liking what you might call ‘high life’ and excitement in London, come and tuck ’imself away in Cobbold for the whole of the festive season? I ask you, sir, why?”

  “Something was said about Mrs. Alveston’s daughter. Was Salter keen on her?”

  “Aw … women’s talk,” said Pennyquick, with the air of experience and profundity of one from whom, from long familiarity with his five women, no feminine secrets were hid. “Women’s talk. They can’t bear … can’t abide … a man and a woman to ’ave any sort of relationships together without wantin’ to make a match of it. Phyllis isn’t Mr. Granville’s sort. They were children together, although he was a year or two older than her. Always friendly … but rowmance … rowmance … rubbish! Female talk.…”

  He passed it off with a contemptuous sweep of his paw.

  “If there’d been anything ‘cooking’ … expression used by my daughters, sir … if there’d been anything cookin’, I’d have known it, not alone from ’earing gossip in the village, but from my family. Not much goes on on the female side of the village that my family don’t know. And I flatter myself I ’ave their fullest confidenks.…”

  “I’m sure you have, Pennyquick.”

  In the room adjoining, one of the girls was singing in a clear, uncultivated soprano. They were always singing in the Pennyquick home.

  “That’s one of my girls. The you
ngest. The eldest is in London at the Academy. Pianner. Won a scholarship. All good musicians. Take after their mother. In the Chapel choir for years till she met me.…”

  Cromwell smiled a wintry smile, which faded before Pennyquick’s look of humble pride.

  “No, sirs,” went on Pennyquick. “In my opinion, Mr. Granville came down here out of the way of somethin’ or somebody.”

  He said it in a hushed and awful voice.

  “You mean he was in trouble?”

  “Ask me, I’d say yes, sir.”

  “Did you meet him before he died, Pennyquick?”

  “Yes, sir, I did. Just stopped a time or two to say howdedo, and ask about him, like. He didn’t look well. Like somebody recoverin’ from serious illness. I asks him if he weren’t well, or had he been ill. ‘No, Pennyquick,’ he says. ‘Why?’ But he gave me a queer look, as if I might be gettin’ at somethin’ he didn’t want me to get near. ‘I’m livin’ in London, now,’ he says. ‘Miss the breezes o’ Cobbold. Nothin’ to put the colour in my cheeks.’ But it wasn’t his cheeks I was lookin’ at, sir. It was his eyes. He looked scared, sir.”

  “Did Plucock say anything about having met him?”

  “Yes. He’d seen him over in Carstonwood. Part of the old Salter estate stretches there. Mr. Granville no doubt went over to see some of the old tenants. Most of them bought their own farms when the estate was sold. A friendly lot, the Salters. Always on good terms with their folk.…”

  “Plucock wasn’t suspicious about anything? I mean, he had no special comment to make on the appearance of Mr. Granville?”

  “No, sir. He agreed with me that he didn’t look himself.”

  “Have you questioned Mrs. Alveston about the matter?”

  “I ’ad a word with her yesterday, but she wasn’t much help.”

  “I must get along and see her myself. Had Salter much luggage?”

  “No, sir. Two cases. I didn’t touch them. Mrs. Alveston was took queer, like. Had one of her attacks. Heart’s bad. Well … one can’t go searching about the house with a sick woman there. And, in my case, it was a bit difficult. In a manner o’ speakin’, sir, they’re all my family the people in this village. They expects help in time o’ trouble, if you get what I mean. It would ’ave ill become me to make Mrs. Alveston more distressed than she was. Phyllis was lookin’ after ’er, so I let ’em be, for the time being.”

  “I understand. Is Mrs. Alveston ailing, then?”

  “Well … yes and no. Poor in spirit, I’d call ’er, sir. Poor in spirit. Had a lot of trouble, like.”

  “What kind?”

  “She was a maid at the Hall, sir. Then children’s nurse. Alveston was one of the hands at the Hall, too. Sort of bailiff and trainer of their horses. They kept ’unters and did a bit o’ steeplechasin’ in the old days. My missus was at the ’all, too. A parlourmaid. That’s where I met ’er.”

  “And Alveston died?”

  “Not exactly. He and his wife didn’t hit it. There was some trouble. He left her.… Ehlisted and never come back. Some said he got killed or missin’. Others said he just didn’t come back.”

  “What was the trouble between him and his wife?”

  “I can’t exactly say, sir. There was rumours, though. They do say Phyllis wasn’t his. He wasn’t ’er father, if you see what I mean, sir. My missus always swears he wasn’t.”

  “Why?”

  “Well …”

  The bobby stroked his chin and coughed.

  “Well, sir.… This is all surmise, as you might say. Not a shred of proof, although my wife swears it. She says Phyllis’s father was one of the Salters. Says the girl has the Salter features, specially the Salter nose. And come to think of it, sir, she is like ’em. See her beside Mr. Granville and you’d know. But you can’t go about sayin’ things like that about an honest, respectable woman and as nice a girl as ever walked down this ’ere village. Can you?”

  Pennyquick looked ready to burst into tears on behalf of the poor women.

  “No, you can’t. But it may account for the relationship, kind of blood tie, between Granville and Phyllis, and for the situation. Even if he loved her, he couldn’t very well marry his own sister, or half-sister, could he?”

  “No, he could not, sir. And that’s what it ’ud amount to, come to think of it, because Granville’s father was the only male Salter left in these parts.”

  “Was he a bit of a rip?” asked Cromwell, finding tongue.

  “Oh, no. Never heard nothin’ o’ that sort about ’im. But mistakes do ’appen in the best regulated families, don’t they, sir?”

  “They do.”

  “When the thing was breathed to me, sir, I remember thinkin’ how thankful I was I heard it so long after my missus was there. If I’d known when I was courtin’ ’er, I’d have spent a few sleepless nights, you may be sure.”

  “How long had the Alvestons been married when this happened?”

  “I can’t say, sir.… Wait a minute …”

  Pennyquick passed into the next room, whence whispering could be heard. Then the whispering grew into a concert in which several voices joined. Finally laughter and then the chiding voice of the constable.

  “Look ’ere, Annie. I won’t have you speak that way. While yo’re ’ere, speak respectable.…”

  “I’m sorry, dad. But you are so funny and old-fashioned. There’s no need to whisper in corners to mother. We’re women of the world, you know.”

  “Well, you can keep that sort of world outside this house, my girl. I am surprised at you, Annie. I am reely.…”

  The constable returned, very red-faced.

  “Sorry, sirs. But really, I don’t know what girls are comin’ to these days. Our Annie, of all girls. Brought up like a lady by my wife who knew what ladies were. My wife says Phyllis was born six months after the weddin’. Annie must have overheard. ‘Jest in time, or born in the vestry,’ she says. I never heard the likes of it!”

  “So, the Salters may have arranged for Alveston to marry the girl.”

  “Yes, sir. On the other hand …”

  “Of course. They may have made Alveston marry her even though they didn’t hit it.”

  “Yes. You never know. All the same, my missus says …”

  “Just so. Well, I’ll call to see the lady and have a talk. Not that we can discuss village gossip openly. Though, I guess, most of the village will know if it’s true.”

  “Be sure, sir. Mrs. Alveston took queer after her husband left her. Never went out in the village again. Sort of ashamed to meet her old friends. I don’t even suppose she’s a pension for Alveston. She’s made her living by bakin’ stuff. Confectionery, boiled ’am, when you could get it, meat pies, and so on. A good cook and made stuff a bit better than the local baker, old Davy. Funny thing, that. People could call at her house for the things, but she wouldn’t go out. Guess she felt safer at ’ome. Spends her time bakin’, doing the house, and readin’ the Bible. Very religious.…”

  “What does Phyllis do?”

  “She’s in a gown shop in Thorncastle. Good job, too, by all accounts. Bit of a hand at designin’. Our May, who’s a mannequin at another fashionable shop, says she’s quite good. The cathedral set like ’er things. Our May would be a mannequin, sir, in spite of me and her mother.…”

  This came a bit apologetically and Pennyquick’s large, sympathetic eyes sought those of Littlejohn for approval.

  “Well, Pennyquick, we’ll get along and see the lady, if you’re ready.”

  “Yes, sir. She’ll be up and about now, I guess. I don’t think there’s anythin’ else to report so far.”

  The constable thought heavily.…

  “Oh, yes. One thing. I was speaking to the village baker this mornin’. Mr. Ephraim Davy, sir. He’s a big man at the local Wesleyans. The church is right opposite Saint Mark’s, the parish church. Well, sir, they’ve a peculiar custom, there. They hold a watch-night service, and just before twelve, one of the deacons goes outside and when t
he New Year arrives he lets it in the chapel. You know, sir, like you do at home. Walks in, right up to the pulpit, shakes the parson by the ’and, wishes all the congregation Happy New Year and God Bless, so to speak, and then offers up a little prayer. It was Mr. Ephraim’s turn to do it this year.…”

  “Yes …”

  “Just as he got outside, he saw two people talkin’ at the church gate of St. Mark’s. Now, he says he’s sure one must have been Mr. Granville Salter. Ephraim wishes he’d gone over and wished ’im all the best. Might have prevented the crime, sir.”

  “Who was with Granville?”

  “He couldn’t rightly make out, sir. It wasn’t pitch dark, but you couldn’t see anybody’s features. However, it was somebody short and stocky, Mr. Davy says.…”

  “But Mr. Smythe said …” interjected Cromwell.

  But Littlejohn interrupted.

  “Will you get your helmet then, Pennyquick, and we’ll be getting along.”

  “Certainly, sir.”

  Mrs. Pennyquick arrived, ostensibly for the tray, but to find out how they’d enjoyed her good things.

  “Thanks very much for the tea and the lovely mince tarts, Mrs. Pennyquick. I must beg the recipe for my wife, if you don’t mind.…”

  The good woman glowed.

  “Certainly, Inspector. With pleasure. Come again and welcome, any time.…”

  Cromwell, too, had been trying to get in his words of thanks and congratulation.

  “You jest watch that lump, sir,” said the bobby’s wife to him. “You never know what a knock’ll do. A cousin o’ mine once got a knock on the ’ead, like you, sir, and they never did any good with him after. Backward, it made him. Never did a day’s turn after it.…

  Cromwell wilted and Littlejohn gave him a wry smile.

  “Now, now, mother. None o’ yore tales. Frightenin’ the sergeant; I won’t ’ave it. You know as well as I do, your cousin Jonah retired on that knock on the head. It didn’t turn him soft at all. It was others as it turned soft.”

  “Well, Andrew Pennyquick, I never …!”