Miss Fothergill gave the envelope to a boy with half-a-crown.
“Take that in to Scotland Yard … at once!”
The urchin looked hard at her, snatched the letter and ran on his way as though the furies were behind him. Miss Fothergill followed the path along the Embankment. It hadn’t changed much there. A few more memorials and a conglomeration of massive concrete buildings on the Strand side. But the river was just the same. The same smell, the same river craft, Waterloo Bridge quite changed, but the old Shot Tower still there. She wished she could have walked round to London Bridge and crossed it, just as she used to do when she went to meet her brother at St. Thomas’s where he was a student. But she was very tired. She entered Charing Cross Underground, taking one look at the Embankment, silhouetted through the entrance against the clean winter sky.…
Harry Coop lived for his job. He loved driving his trains. The rattle and the roar, the plunge from the lighted stations into the dark holes burrowing under London, and then the rush into the light again at another halt. The power he controlled by a flick of the wrist! Dashing about in his great monster with hundreds of people at the back of him, tearing or crawling along, just at a twist of Harry’s hand. “Old Father Thames keeps rollin’ along, over me blinkin’ head,” he improvised as he rattled under the river from Waterloo to Charing Cross. The brightness of Charing Cross Station shone like a dot in the distance and spread wider and wider as he drew near. He braked gently.…
“My Gawd!” yelled Harry, all alone in his cab. He might be one of the best drivers on the Underground, but he wasn’t a magician. As he skidded past the platform, struggling to stop the train, he could hear nothing but the protests of the huge machine he was handling. But the faces which flew past … Terrible! Wide mouths, staring eyes, arms waving, women fainting and having hysterics, people rushing to the mouth of the tunnel from which Harry and his train had appeared.
“I couldn’t stop.… You couldn’t expect me to stop, could you? ’Umanly impossible.… I couldn’t stop.”
He kept telling them that, as though they blamed him, and he was still saying it when, weeping harshly and exhausted, they took him home in a taxi to the wife who comforted him.
TWENTY
THE FILE IS CLOSED
“WHO gave you this?”
The constable on duty at New Scotland Yard looked ferociously at the cheeky rascal who thrust the letter in his face at the gate.
“Old dame on Whitehall.…”
That was all. He’d done his part and he took to his heels. The police weren’t much in his line. He’d opened the envelope on the way, found it contained nothing valuable or thrilling. Only a lot of writing.… Probably balmy. He’d read somewhere about the number of letters confessing crimes they hadn’t done that people wrote to Scotland Yard every day. He licked the flap of the letter and stuck it up again as best he could.
“Hey,” said the bobby. “Who’s been openin’ this …?”
But there was nobody to answer.
Littlejohn and Cromwell were in. There wasn’t much more to keep them at Cobbold and they’d said good-bye to their friends the Pennyquicks and Percival. Littlejohn turned over the grubby envelope. Another confession, or else somebody with a theory.
“Yours sincerely,
Madeline Fothergill.”
“Good Lord!”
Not far away, the ambulance was removing all that was left of her. But Littlejohn didn’t know that, yet.
There was not much of it. Three pages of large script; but quite enough.
Dear Inspector,
I think by now you will have reached your conclusions. When I met you, I knew you would sort it all out, however long the road. I should have told you everything at Cobbold and saved us all so much trouble. I can imagine your distress at the thought of arresting a woman for murder, especially one you liked and who quite took a fancy to you, too. I will try to save you that trouble. I haven’t as yet quite made up my mind how I will do it.
Briefly, I killed Alveston. He was becoming too dangerous. Already responsible, if not guilty, for three murders, a lifetime’s unhappiness for his wife and heaven knows how many other women, it was time he went. Besides, the whole village was scared out of its wits and the peace of the place had gone.
Most important, however, he caused my brother’s death. It may sound strange to you, but until Granville’s inquiry stimulated me, I hadn’t read my brother’s journal. I was too afraid to bring back the unhappiness I felt at our parting. I had put it off until I really didn’t want to read it. Perhaps I was afraid of what I would find there. When induced to make the effort, I found not only that Alveston had robbed him of the woman he loved, but inflicted upon him the appalling injuries which caused my brother’s death. My brother, at least, gave the scoundrel a chance. He beat him with a whip in daylight. Alveston attacked my brother in the dark with a loaded stick and, knocking him down halfconscious, kicked him terribly.… I never knew that until I read the diary. My brother always kept his troubles to himself and tried to share those of others as well.
I had learned from Mrs. Alveston that her husband was about. He was blackmailing her, in addition to the rest. From the diary I learned the secret of the priest’s hole and also reached the frenzy which knew no appeasement but the death at my own hands of the wretch who had spoiled the happy life my brother and I had made for ourselves.
I feared you would discover Mrs. Alveston’s concealment of her husband and convict her in the end, as an accessory, so I made up the story of Polly Duckett. I knew the time Alveston would be waiting for the food his wife was bringing. To make sure she should not be accused of the crime, I pretended to send a message from Phyllis to Mr. Smythe asking him to call on her at around the time she would leave. He would either detain her or accompany her, I thought. Instead, he was late, but followed her. I had already got to the Hall. I took a small crowbar with me and sat on the stairs in the dark, until he opened the door of the hiding-place. He might not have been there. He might have been on the prowl. In that case, I would have followed Plucock and the little man who was too inquisitive. I was fortunate. Alveston appeared, not from the secret room, but from somewhere below, carrying the limp body of the man in the check suit. I hit him once with all my might. I had only time to hide the body of Alveston’s new victim, when Mrs. Alveston and Smythe appeared. I had to leave Alveston for them to find. Until they went I had a few shocks. Especially when they thrust Alveston’s body in the priest’s hole, the door of which had remained ajar. Luckily, they did not shine a light inside, or they would have found me there with the body of the little man. When they had gone, I emerged and dragged the little man’s body to the stairs. Somehow it slithered all the way down. I lost my nerve, closed the door of the priest’s hole on Alveston’s body and ran for my life.
That is all, Inspector. I am sorry I misled you and wasted so much of your time.
Life is so beautifully ironical, isn’t it? I had a perfect plan for getting away to Lima with money enough. Instead of being detained at the port for murder, I was held for a currency offence I hadn’t committed. I was granted bail! I am as free as a bird in a cage. In any case, what would a woman of my age be fleeing from justice for? What is there to fly for and from? All I knew, loved and trusted has long since gone.
May I bid you good-bye and wish you well?
Yours sincerely,
Madeline Fothergill
“Exactly as you said,” remarked Cromwell after he’d read the letter.
“I wish it hadn’t been,” said Littlejohn.
He slowly descended to the ground floor and entered a room where, surrounded by a group of admiring officers, sat Meg, the sheep-dog he had adopted and brought home with him. She was ignoring the attentions of all of them and, as Littlejohn entered, her strained expression vanished. Her upper lip crooked in a grin of joy; tailless, she showed her pleasure by agitating the whole hindquarters of her woolly body. The Inspector bent to caress her.
“At least I brought one bit of happiness back from the beastly tragedy of Cobbold,” he told them, and together man and dog left for home.
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Copyright © 1950 by George Bellairs
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ISBN: 978-1-4976-9072-1
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The Case of the Headless Jesuit Page 23
