Love Lies Bleeding

by Edmund Crispin

  ‘To delay pursuit, of course, and keep the police running round registry offices until she’d been got well away to a place where she couldn’t be found. Now, let’s get down to details. She left school, all right, at four o’clock yesterday afternoon, because I’ve found several girls who saw her. Usually she biked, because it’s almost four miles to her home, but her three-speed’s being mended at the moment, so she had to walk yesterday. She was a fast walker, and she should have been home by five. Only she wasn’t. So she must have been kidnapped on the way there.’

  ‘I’m bound to admit’ – Fen spoke apologetically – ‘that some such notion had already occurred to me.’

  ‘Don’t get impatient,’ said Elspeth with severity, ‘because we must get this straight. One false step in our reasoning and we could go miles astray.’ Abashed, Fen murmured words of contrition. ‘Now,’ Elspeth resumed, ‘the point is that on the road between the school and Brenda’s house there’s only one place that’s lonely enough for anyone to dare try and kidnap her in daylight.’

  Fen, who had been reclining comfortably on the small of his back, sat upright. Up to the present he had had scant hopes of the usefulness of this conversation, but now he was interested.

  ‘And that is?’ he asked.

  ‘Melton Chart.’

  ‘What’s Melton Chart?’

  ‘It’s a wood just outside Castrevenford, on the west of the river. A big wood, too. People have actually got lost in it and died of starvation – they found a tramp’s bones there only last year, and five years ago the bodies of some children they’d been searching for for five days.’ Elspeth enunciated these lugubrious details with a certain relish. ‘But of course, the road only goes through a corner of it. Do you see what I’m getting at?’

  Fen tapped ash into a buttercup, and, instantly regretting the action, blew it carefully out again.

  ‘In a way,’ he answered with reserve. ‘You mean that Brenda has been’ – he narrowly avoided saying ‘killed’ – ‘hidden somewhere in this wood.’

  ‘Exactly. And that’s where my knowledge comes in. As I said, the wood’s big, and it’d take days to search it thoroughly. But if we could find some kind of a trail, and put a dog on to it—’

  ‘But it would have to be a trail of something specific after this lapse of time,’ said Fen. ‘Aniseed, creosote, blood – something like that.’

  ‘Blood is just what I think we may find.’

  Fen was startled. ‘What makes you say that?’

  ‘I’ll tell you.’ Elspeth looked about her and lowered her voice. ‘Years ago, when we were only kids, we used to play a sort of war game in the fields near Melton Chart.’ She eyed Fen rather self-consciously. ‘You know the silly things children do…Anyway, there were two sides, and we took prisoners, and all that sort of thing, and Brenda used to treat it all frightfully seriously. If she played a game, she played it, whatever the consequences to herself or anyone else.

  ‘Well, there was one time when she did the most amazing thing – she could be absolutely reckless when she liked. She was the leader of our side, and while she was out alone, scouting, she was captured by the others. Once you were captured you had to stay captured until some member of your own side found you and touched you. The enemy took you wherever they liked, and once you were there you were bound in honour to stay there, and not make any sign or sound that would help your own side to find you. Only while you were being taken there you could yell out or do anything you liked. We worked out who’d won by the number of unransomed prisoners at the end of two hours or whatever it was.

  ‘Well, of course, we had to get Brenda back, as she was our leader, but we didn’t have any idea where they’d taken her, and she was too far away when she was captured for us to hear her calling. We hunted about, and after a time we noticed that a little mongrel we’d got with us was frightfully excited about some spots of blood he’d found in the road, and there was a trail of it, and he followed the trail, and we followed him, and in the end he led us to where Brenda was.’ Elspeth paused for breath. ‘And do you know what she’d done?’

  Fen admitted that he could only guess.

  ‘Well, she had a tiny penknife in her pocket, and when she saw she was captured, she managed to get it open without taking it out, and held it hidden in her hand, and bent down as though she was pulling up a stocking, and gave herself a terrific cut on the leg with it, under her skirt, so they wouldn’t notice. She knew we’d got the dog, you see, and she thought it might follow the blood, and it did.’

  Elspeth had become much excited during her narrative. ‘So there it is,’ she concluded. ‘Brenda would be certain to remember the trick, because we all talked about it for months afterwards. And she still carries the same penknife. I’m sure if she was kidnapped she’d have done it again, on the off chance that it would help.’

  By now Fen was thoroughly attentive. ‘My dear young lady,’ he said reproachfully, ‘why on earth haven’t you told someone about all this before?’

  ‘I’m an idiot,’ said Elspeth with a penitential expression which greatly became her, ‘but the fact is I’ve only just remembered. And I recognized you and I’d seen you talking to the superintendent and I knew it must be about Brenda, so I thought you were the person who ought to know.’

  The third and last relay of tea was now in progress, and the composition of the groups on the lawn had substantially changed. Fen stared absently at them and threw his cigarette end into the hedge. He said, ‘Well, we shall certainly have to take action about this. I’ll talk to Stagge.’

  ‘Oh, no, please, not him.’ Elspeth spoke with venom.

  ‘But why ever not?’ he demanded, wondering how the easy-going superintendent could possibly have aroused such animosity.

  ‘He got my father’s driving licence taken away,’ Elspeth explained sulkily, ‘and Mummy won’t drive, and I’m still too young, so we have to walk everywhere.’

  It was, Fen agreed, an exasperating situation. ‘But at the same time,’ he added, ‘we can’t just keep this to ourselves.’

  ‘Why not? Why can’t we trace Brenda, and beat the police at their own job?’

  ‘Well, for one thing, someone’s got to supply us with a bloodhound.’

  Elspeth pointed at Mr Merrythought, who, dazed and comatose after his floral banquet, was sprawling owlish and unfriended at the edge of the lawn.

  ‘What about him?’ she said. ‘He’s a bloodhound, I think.’

  She spoke in the tones of one propounding an unanswerable proposition, but Fen had answers to it.

  ‘He’s far too old,’ he objected. ‘And not, from what I’ve seen of him, at all a reliable dog.’

  ‘Oh, please, Professor Fen,’ she pleaded, her large blue eyes spectacularly plaintive. ‘Couldn’t we just try? If you go to the police, they’re sure not to let me help, and as I thought of it in the first place that’d be damnably unfair.’

  Fen considered. He had sound reasons for believing that Brenda Boyce was no longer alive; if she had been, amateur sleuthing, in the light of Elspeth’s information, would have been indefensible. But as things were, he saw no particular harm in it, and it would have the additional merit of lending colourability to the trap which, with Weems’ connivance, he had set for the murderer.

  ‘Very well,’ he said. ‘We’ll try. When can you start?’

  ‘Now,’ said Elspeth unequivocally. ‘Have you got a car?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘That’s good,’ she said. ‘But before we go I’d better introduce you to my parents, otherwise they’ll have doubts about your intentions. You know – News of the World and all that.’ Fen was shocked. ‘Come along.’

  In the event, and for reasons which need not concern us but which included Fen’s insistence on changing into cooler clothes, it was seven o’clock by the time they set out, and the sky, which in the earlier part of the day had been as blue as a redstart’s egg, had clouded over, with promise of a drizzling rain. Mr Merrythought had dev
eloped an unconvincing coyness, and for a long time they were unable to lure him into the car.

  ‘He’s just perverse,’ said Fen after all kinds of blandishment had failed. ‘I think the thing to do is to shoo him away.’

  They tried this, and it worked. Mr Merrythought leaped at once into the driving seat, where he settled down to lick the steering wheel – which was soon covered with slimy, disgusting smears – and to gaze stonily through the windscreen. A further interval elapsed before they were able to shift him. When they eventually succeeded, Elspeth grasped him firmly and courageously by the collar while Fen, after hurriedly wiping the wheel, got Lily Christine under way. Alarmed at the motion, Mr Merrythought dabbed a paw apprehensively over the side, like a swimmer about to enter cold water, but he soon saw that there was no chance of escape, and resigned himself to a sullen hebetude.

  Directed by Elspeth, Fen drove from the headmaster’s house to the main road, turned off it about three-quarters of a mile from the school gates, and bumped along a number of narrow lanes whose banks were crowned with clumps of mignonette and rock roses.

  ‘It’s a short cut,’ said Elspeth by way of apology. ‘We could have gone all the way round by the main road, but it would have taken much longer.’

  ‘This is all right,’ said Fen as he swerved to avoid a vagrant domestic fowl. ‘Is Mr Merrythought still with us?’

  Elspeth turned to look. Mr Merrythought, bouncing about on the rumble seat, looked truculent, suspicious, and far from easy in his mind regarding the purpose of their expedition. Occasionally he lunged at a gnat or a mite which whisked past his nose, lost his balance, and fell heavily against Fen’s back. But at least he was managing to remain in the car.

  ‘He’s OK,’ Elspeth reported. ‘And we haven’t far to go now.’

  They passed fields of green wheat, sheep grazing, an ancient, timbered farmhouse. The ground rose, bringing gentle contours, fertile and richly wooded, into view. The pastures were speckled with buttercups and daisies. There was a smell of hay in the evening air, and the sun, westering, seemed tangled in the high branches of a coppice of elms. By a large black barn, overlooking Castrevenford town and the quicksilver coils of the river, they turned left, into a more even road, and soon the trees grew thicker about them.

  ‘Here we are,’ said Elspeth.

  Fen stopped the car. Mr Merrythought, jolted into a temporary submissiveness, stared impassively about him. It was very much darker beneath the trees – quieter, too – and no living creature was in sight.

  ‘Not very populous,’ Fen observed. ‘You’re right in saying this is a likely place for it to have happened. Well, what’s our plan of campaign?’

  ‘I suggest you drop me here and drive on till you get to the edge of the wood,’ said Elspeth. ‘The thing is, you see, that we’ve got to find the blood before we can start. If we separate now, we can work up the bank, looking for it, until we meet, or until one of us finds it.’

  ‘Both sides of the road?’

  Elspeth shook her head. ‘Not at first, anyway. You can see there’s not much wood on the left. It’s the other side we must look.’

  ‘All right. Who’s going to have Mr Merrythought?’

  ‘You can,’ Elspeth said as she climbed out of the car. ‘He seems to like you.’

  ‘Everyone says that,’ Fen remarked, nettled. ‘And I don’t really think it a compliment, even if it’s true, which I question.’

  ‘Yell out if you find anything,’ said Elspeth, ignoring this complaint. ‘Halloo my name to the reverberate hills.’

  Fen raised his eyebrows. ‘Bless us,’ he said. ‘A literary young woman.’

  Elspeth grinned. ‘I’m doing it for Higher Cert,’ she explained. ‘See you soon.’

  So Fen drove on, as commanded, and in about half a mile emerged from the tunnel of trees. He parked the car, got out of it, and beckoned to Mr Merrythought.

  ‘Now,’ he said. ‘You’re supposed to be a bloodhound. Find some blood.’

  The road was tarred and fairly narrow. On his left, as he faced back into the wood, was a high bank overgrown with brome-grass, through which, here and there, the yellow blink of a tormentil was visible. Dilapidated sign boards admonished incipient trespassers. The weak, diffused evening light played patchily on the pale yellow oak leaves, and the scent of the birches was in the air. Mr Merrythought sniffed about, displaying more goodwill than was habitual with him, and Fen began his search.

  In the greying light it was not an easy task, and the proliferation of summer growths was not helpful. Luckily there were considerable stretches of the bank where, thanks to bramble and bracken, it was obvious that no one had climbed, and he was able to concentrate on the more accessible points, some of them worn by undaunted trespassing to mere mud streaked with chalk. But even so he was pessimistic regarding their chances of success; and when, at the end of nearly an hour’s careful work, he heard Elspeth’s distant shout, he did not seriously believe that she had found what they were looking for.

  13

  A Sennet: Enter Second Murderer

  Yet it proved that she had. He ran to meet her, with Mr Merrythought lurching quite rapidly along behind him, and discovered her earnestly studying a little dark splash, filmed with grit and dust, at the edge of the road. In this Mr Merrythought at once displayed a perceptible interest; no doubt the triumphs of his nonage were recurring in some obscure fashion to his mind, for he uttered a growl of satisfaction and began nosing his way slowly up the bank.

  ‘That’s it!’ said Elspeth, her eyes sparkling with excitement. ‘I bet you that’s it!’

  ‘It may be,’ Fen said cautiously.

  ‘Oh, don’t be so tiresome, of course it is.’

  ‘I don’t want to be discouraging,’ said Fen. ‘But even if it’s blood it may be only a wounded rabbit, you know.’

  ‘Never mind. We must follow. Have you got any paper on you?’

  ‘Paper?’ Fen queried. ‘What on earth for?’

  ‘If we’re going far into the wood we must leave a trail,’ said Elspeth practically. ‘Otherwise we shall take hours finding our way back, particularly in the dark. We might never get back, and our bones would be picked clean by ravens.’

  ‘Ravens?’ said Fen, envisaging this charnel scene without pleasure. ‘Heaven forbid.’ He felt in the pockets of his raincoat and produced, rather to his own surprise, a small Bible.

  ‘Fifteen hundred pages,’ he remarked. ‘That ought to take us some distance, if we use it sparingly.’

  Mr Merrythought was finding some difficulty in negotiating the top of the bank; he was making noises which suggested that he suffered from rheumatism. Fen gave him a good push in the hindquarters and they scrambled up after him. The edge of the wood was inhabited by dense clouds of gnats. Gorse was blooming in plump, compact yellow buds, and – with nettles, brambles, and huge, pagoda-like fronds of bracken – constituted the greater part of the undergrowth. There were small blackened areas, decimated by fire. Flowers of purple columbine drooped on their stems. The trunks of the trees were encircled with ivy. The bizarre, slightly menacing hush of the forest engulfed them.

  Mr Merrythought, his nose to the ground, set off in what Fen optimistically interpreted as a purposeful fashion.

  Their progress during the next half-hour – with darkness growing fast and Fen tearing pages from the Bible and dropping them on to the ground – was sporadic. Partly this was due to the fact that a lot of the time was spent in pushing their way through thickets of resistant virgin vegetation – their clothes, as Elspeth sadly observed, would never be the same again; and partly it was due to the ambiguous demeanour of Mr Merrythought. At the end of Leviticus, for example, after a fine initial burst of speed, he appeared quite abruptly to lose interest in the whole affair, and turned aside to investigate rabbit holes. Well on in the book of Proverbs, again, he came to a sudden standstill and gazed prolongedly at some distant object (what it was, and why it should so enthral him, neither of them could make ou
t) with the elevated and spiritual air of Cortez surveying the Pacific from a peak in Darien; so that Fen, who misdoubted the quality of Mr Merrythought’s intelligence, began to wonder if in fact he was trailing anything in particular.

  Unfortunately – though in view of what happened subsequently one had better, perhaps, say fortunately – they could not write off Mr Merrythought’s efforts as no more than the delusions of senility. Although Fen darkly suspected that he simply imagined he was being taken for a walk, on two occasions his torch, which in the increasing obscurity was much needed, did show them traces of what might be blood, and these were just convincing enough to keep them going, without, however, imbuing them with any serious hopes of the ultimate success of their enterprise. Moreover, a nagging anxiety was at the back of Fen’s mind; if by some fantastic chance Mr Merrythought were actually leading them to Brenda Boyce, they would find her dead, horribly dead perhaps, and to Elspeth the shock of such a discovery would be very great. Fen became silent, debating the best course to pursue in such circumstances. And the amiable chatter with which Elspeth had enlivened the earlier part of their walk faded and died. She was demoralized, to tell the truth, by the fact that her best skirt and stockings were being slowly but inexorably torn to bits, and only pride prevented her from suggesting that they should give up and go home.

  ‘My God, it’s creepy,’ she said with a shiver.

  And certainly there is something disturbing about a large wood in the twilight. Apart from the distant cry of a nightjar, the silence was absolute, and now that the light was almost gone the trees seemed to crowd in on them as they walked, like an ambush in readiness to strike. Elspeth was glad she was not alone, for if she had been it would have been difficult to hold at bay the impression that someone or something was keeping pace with them. Once or twice she could have sworn that a pale shadow was moving among the trees, that the bushes were being moved by some person on a course parallel to their own. ‘And this poor boy was followed, and at last pursued and overtaken, and either torn in pieces and somehow made away with, by a horrible hopping creature in white, which you saw first dodging about among the trees, and gradually it appeared more and more plainly.’ It was a pity, Elspeth reflected, that she should remember a sentence at such a time.