Death of a Busybody

by George Bellairs

  “I shall that, sir, and I’d best be goin’. I’ll be seein’ you at the inquest, then.”

  Oldfield arrived shortly after Harriwinckle’s departure and found his colleague eating cold beef and pickles. They discussed the forthcoming proceedings. Oldfield was, of course, asking for an adjournment and hoped that the mere formalities of time and cause of death would be gone through and the rest left for the future. Littlejohn told Oldfield the results of his own and Harriwinckle’s work in the morning and they arranged to go carefully over the scene of the crime as soon as the Coroner had been disposed of. Such disposal was, however, easier said than done.

  Mr. Absalom Carradine, M.B.E., was the principal solicitor of Evingdon, and a very efficient man after his fashion. Circumstances had embittered him against the rural population, however. His son, Roger, had, some years back, confidently put up as Conservative candidate for the Evingdon division of Trentshire, a safe Tory seat for centuries. But his father’s activities in matters concerning tithes had antagonized the whole agricultural labouring class against him and his family, with the result that they did not, as heretofore, vote as expected. Instead, they returned a nondescript Labour candidate and cast Roger to the bottom of the poll with such a thud, that he only barely escaped forfeiting his deposit. To make matters worse, however, at the next general election little more than a year afterwards, the disgusted Roger having withdrawn in favour of another Conservative hopeful, the labourers of Evingdon division almost unanimously ejected Mr. Smithkins, their Socialist M.P., in favour of the Tory. Absalom Carradine never forgave that piece of impudence and whenever he encountered agricultural labourers in his courts, he gave them a gruelling. He set about Isaiah Gormley almost as soon as he had been sworn.

  The Coroner’s court was held in the Village Institute, a converted tithe-barn near the Bell Inn. Mr. Carradine, M.B.E., sat on a rostrum, with his clerk by his side and a large jug of brackish-looking water in front of him. He was a tall, portly man of seventy or thereabouts, with a pink, heavy face, roman nose, white hair and moustache and stern blue eyes, which shone like steel through his old-fashioned gold pince-nez. His jury sat at right-angles to him on bentwood chairs, a selection of shuffling countrymen, dressed in their best and looking overawed at the important duties which had suddenly been thrust upon them. They had inspected the body and tried to look like initiates who knew what they were about.

  The room was crowded to suffocation. Inquests are rare in Hilary and all who could attend were present. Washing, shopping, baking and mending had either been crushed into a morning’s work or abandoned until another day by most of the women of the place. It was harvest time, but as many casual labourers as possible had taken a half-day and, dressed in their best, jostled for seats in the Institute. The principal parties to the enquiry, the police, Mr. Claplady, Isaiah Gormley, Mr. Haxley and a few others were seated on a long bench facing the Coroner. Behind them, the rank and file snorted, whispered, tittered and sweated. One of the Gormley women had even brought a child-in-arms and when it began to whine miserably through lack of air and comfort, successfully gagged it with a large dummy-teat.

  Mr. Carradine, after closely perusing a dossier on the desk before him, suddenly raised his head, stared at the audience after the fashion of a bull facing a toreador’s red rag and addressed them pungently.

  “This isn’t an afternoon’s entertainment and I won’t have my court turned into a cinema show. Any more noise and I’ll clear the room.”

  There was an awful hush, punctuated by heavy mass-breathing. Someone dropped an umbrella and recovered it with deep embarrassment, and the proceedings commenced.

  P.C. Harriwinckle, hot and important, told of his share in the discovery of the body and was handled very civilly by the Coroner. He had, during the electioneering of Mr. Roger Carradine, done his best to keep law and order at his meetings and saved him a time or two from the horseplay of certain unruly elements which dogged his footsteps wherever he toured. Mr. Absalom had not forgotten it. He complimented the constable on his evidence which was briefly corroborated by Mr. Claplady and I. Gormley and then turned to Inspector Oldfield, who was primed with the more technical features of the investigation. He told how he had been notified of the crime by his subordinate and had hurried right away to Hilary. The Coroner had already viewed the scene of the murder and followed the evidence closely, making notes the while.

  “Had the body been removed from the, ahem, the cesspool when you got there?”

  “No, sir. The vicar was on the spot when Gormley, the labourer, found the body and saw to it that nothing was touched until we arrived.”

  “Very commendable of him,” said Mr. Carradine soberly, deliberately omitting Gormley from his praise. “And was there anything noteworthy about the position of the corpse?”

  “It was lying face downwards in about four inches of water. The hands were spread, as one does in an effort to break a fall, although the lady was unconscious when thrown-in.”

  “Matters relating to the autopsy are the doctor’s business,” snapped the Coroner. “Proceed with a description of matters as you found them.”

  Oldfield continued without turning a hair. He was used to this kind of treatment from Mr. Carradine, in whose courts he appeared about once a week.

  “Her handbag and umbrella were under the body. An old-fashioned watch, pinned on the breast of the deceased, had stopped at eleven and a half minutes past eleven.”

  “H’m. Have we any reason to suppose that that was the precise time of death?”

  “At first, we thought so. It has been ascertained that Miss Tither was proud of her watch and its timekeeping and checked it every morning by wireless time before the eight o’clock news was read.”

  “From whom was this information obtained?”

  “From Sarah Russell, the maid of the deceased.”

  “Is she here?”

  Sarah Russell was sworn, and confirmed the Inspector’s statement. The officer resumed.

  “A watchmaker from Evingdon has examined the watch and gives his expert opinion that its stoppage is due to water getting in the works.”

  “Is he here?”

  With a sigh, Oldfield gave place to Theodore Lee, of Evingdon, who emphatically testified in support of the Inspector’s evidence. He was so sure of himself, that Mr. Carradine reprimanded him for impertinence and sent him packing with a grievance.

  “You made reservations concerning the time of death, Inspector. Why?”

  “Perhaps my expression misled you, sir. May I explain? That shown by the watch was, in fact, the approximate time of death, but there is reason to believe that some time elapsed between the deceased being thrown in the tank and dying.”

  “How could that be?” interposed the Coroner impatiently. “You are surely not straining at the brief period of immersion necessary for drowning?”

  “No, sir. But it has been suggested that at the time the body was thrown in the cesspit, there was no water in it, and it must have slowly seeped in afterwards, or alternatively been poured in.”

  “What nonsense is this?”

  “The labourer who cleaned the pit on the morning of the crime turned off the inflow, thoroughly shovelled out the residue of filtration and left no liquid in it.”

  “Is the man in court?”

  There was a commotion as Isaiah Gormley again presented himself for questioning. He was dressed in his best. Having only half a Sunday suit, which consisted of a green tail coat of ancient design with black tape pipings, he had borrowed a pair of trousers from his son, George Hackingsmith, which were too narrow round the waist and too long in the leg and made him walk as though mounted on horseback. He wore, too, a celluloid collar, supported by a ready-made tie, which had seen better days, and a dicky, which projected at each side. Mrs. John Henry Gormley, who sat in court, still stifling her youngest with a rubber dummy-teat, had turned him out
thus and was proud of him.

  The re-appearance of the ancient caused a stir in court and a concerted murmur of encouragement rose from the audience, as did the composite odour of unwashed bodies, dirty linen, stale tobacco, moth balls and liniment, which had long been struggling for mastery against the disinfectant with which the room was cleaned. The Coroner turned a baleful eye on the offenders and the hum died down like that of an organ from which the wind power has suddenly been cut off.

  Gormley was accidentally sworn again and with difficulty, and faced the Coroner with a look alternating between extreme cupidity and arrested development.

  “Now, Gormley, what is all this about the cesspool being quite empty?”

  “It wuz, yer worship.”

  “But surely it would refill rapidly as the water from the house was poured down sinks and the like.”

  “Naw.”

  “Why?”

  “Cos oi turned un awf at the tap.”

  Oldfield here interposed, placing the diagram supplied by the vicar before him.

  “I see from the drawing before me that there are two tanks, one of which fills first and contains bacteria. The jury will follow closely.”

  The eight men tried to look wise. Mr. Carradine read the blueprint haltingly.

  “The first tank deals with solid matter, which falls to the bottom and is consumed by the bacteria; the liquid drains off into the second tank through a pipe half-way up the first, and then, after filtering through a bed at the base of the second tank, passes, purified, into the ditch which carries it away. There is a stop-cock on the pipe connecting the two tanks. Do you say you closed that, Gormley, whilst you worked on the second one?”

  “Yus, oi dun that.”

  “Stop shuffling and speak up, Gormley.”

  Isaiah had also borrowed a pair of his son’s boots, which were a size too small for him and he was frenziedly trampling the floor to gain relief. He made as if to spit and then, remembering himself, swallowed with great agitation of his Adam’s-apple.

  “Now, Gormley. Had you finished the work, and closed the trap of the tank?”

  “Naw. Oi dun all but put new cinders in bottom of un.”

  “Why did you leave the job half-way through the morning?”

  “Oi went on stroike.”

  “You what?”

  Mr. Carradine was beginning to enjoy himself. Such evidence of Bolshevik activities was right down his street.

  “Oi went on stroike,” repeated the ancient with greater emphasis, gazing blankly at the large framed portrait of the donor of the Institute, the late Colonel Phillimore-Cadby, who for twenty-two years had been returned unopposed as M.P. for Evingdon and during that time had not made a single speech in the House.

  “Explain yourself and remove the impudent expression from your face. This is a court, not a taproom.”

  There was a muffled commotion in court due to discreet mirth, indignation and the vociferous realization by Mrs. Gormley’s baby that the teat was a dummy.

  Old Gormley’s eye fell on the clock and he suddenly realized that if he did not hurry, closing-time would be upon him. He was anticipating a lot of free pints for his share in the entertainment and, therefore, speeded up his testimony and intelligence. Before he left the box, he had, much to Mr. Claplady’s discomfiture, explained the circumstances of his down-tools protest. He also stated that he had arranged with Mrs. Jackson, the vicar’s housekeeper, to be sparing in her use of the drains until he had finished in the cesspit. Yes, in his dudgeon, he had walked off and left the connecting tap closed. No, he did not think at the time about the embarrassment such an act might have caused. He wasn’t used to using cesspools, only to cleaning them. The Coroner roundly trounced him. He told him he was a disgrace to the village and, as an elder, ought to be setting a better example. Mr. Carradine expressed grave displeasure at Gormley’s ignorant testimony, impertinence, absence of public spirit and lack of understanding of the importance of inquests. He even mentioned the grave risk Isaiah had run of being committed for contempt. Under this load of sin and wrath, the ancient creaked out of the box, winked at the audience, made his exit and had to pay for his own beer after all.

  The rest of the proceedings fell rather flat after Gormley’s comic interlude. Dr. Codrington gave medical evidence, which showed that death was due to drowning, but that there were severe bruises and lacerations of the head, which would have produced the necessary state of unconsciousness for the unresisted drowning in four inches of drain water. As regards the weapon which had inflicted the injuries to the head, it might have been a heavy stick, a stone, the handle to, say, a pitchfork, or even the butt-end of a gun. When cleaned, the wounds revealed the impression of being created by any of the objects mentioned. Time of death tallied approximately with that of the stopped watch. Asked by the Coroner if any other items of interest came to light at the autopsy, Dr. Codrington stated that the hands were clenched and, on forcing open the palm of the right one, he found a small, crumpled ball of paper. On examination, this proved to be one of Miss Tither’s own tracts. “The Way of the Ungodly shall Perish”, was printed in red ink on a white ground and across the print had been scrawled, in large blue pencil, a very obscene word, which made Mr. Carradine clear his throat as he read it.

  Mr. Claplady corroborated Gormley’s testimony and received a sympathetic comment from the Coroner concerning the unseemly, nay, despicable behaviour of the old labourer. Sarah Russell said she had no idea where Miss Tither was going at the time she met her death. Mr. Haxley, who caused a sensation by refusing to be sworn, stated that he had no idea where Miss Tither went after she left him. He and Mary Wood both told the tale about the shooting of the rabbit after which they left Miss Tither to her own devices.

  Mr. Carradine had had quite enough of this rural inquest. The odour of the stuffy atmosphere, the bucolic faces watching his every move, the self-conscious eagerness of his jury, were getting on his nerves. He turned to his eight trusty men and told them to return a verdict of wilful murder against some person or persons unknown. The jury formally hissed in each others’ faces by way of considering their problem, agreed with the Coroner, and their finding was accordingly entered.

  The audience remained seated as though waiting for another turn on the bill whilst Mr. Carradine wrote-up and gathered his notes, whispered to his clerk and the police and released the jury. The gathering was broken-up by the excited arrival of a youth in corduroys who, with sublime disregard for the place in which he was intruding, rushed to Mr. Claplady and whispered in his ear.

  The vicar turned to Littlejohn in great excitement.

  “Oh dear, oh dear. It would happen just now. Please excuse me, one of my hives has swarmed!”

  And gathering up his hat, the good man chased off in the direction of a black cloud which was rapidly approaching the distant horizon.

  Chapter VIII

  Topography

  As he emerged from the Institute at the termination of the inquest, Littlejohn thought to himself, “Now we can get down to business at last.” Since his arrival in the village, he had accumulated a mass of disorderly information, alibis, thumb-nail sketches of personalities and details of the crime. He wished to settle down to his own orderly routine, deal with one thing at a time, and clear his mind of encumbrances. He took from his pocket a foolscap envelope which Mr. Claplady had handed to him when they met in the Coroner’s court, with an injunction to peruse its contents at his leisure. He found it to contain a rough map, drawn in ink on a piece of foolscap by the vicar, whose ideas of cartography were not very precise. The gesture, however, was a gracious one and the plan now in his hands would prove very useful.

  Oldfield joined his colleague in the road. The villagers, still hanging round in knots, as though expecting something sensational to turn up, eyed the pair with eager expectation. The Inspector from Evingdon had little new in the way of
information and Littlejohn was the same, but at the Scotland Yard man’s suggestion, they again visited the scene of the crime. There, Littlejohn took out the vicar’s map and checked his position. A triangular area of grazing land, with the village centre as its apex, constituted the spreading stage of the murder. From the Bell Inn, one side of the triangle, consisting of the main street and the Evingdon-Stretton Harcourt Road, extended to meet the base, which was the Stretton Lattimer Road. The other side, again from the inn, travelled a crooked course to meet the base near the church and vicarage. The two buildings last mentioned were surrounded on two sides by oaks and sycamores, a pleasant sight to see; the remaining two sides of the square containing them consisted of roads. The cesspool lay in a hollow between the churchyard and the vicarage hedge. This hollow gradually rose until it reached ground-level near the thickest part of the trees. At this point, too, there began a thick, hawthorn hedge, which ran parallel to the base of the triangular field, thus cutting it in two, and terminating at the Evingdon Road. Littlejohn, with Oldfield peeping over his shoulder, took his bearings from the vicar’s chart and seemed satisfied.

  “A bit rough and out of proportion,” commented Oldfield, “but a useful effort. There’s the footpath, marked by dots.” He pointed to the field-path, which began at the tip of the triangle and cut straight through the field to the vicarage side entrance, making its way through the hawthorn hedge by a short tunnel of thick foliage and branches. Half-way in its course, the path was joined by a tributary, which had its source at a stile on the Evingdon Road. Oldfield pointed to a spot mid-way along the by-path. “That’s about where Miss Tither met Haxley, according to the vicar.”

  Littlejohn carefully filled his pipe, lit it and puffed awhile. They had strolled through the tunnel and were standing on the top side of the hawthorn hedge. The land from there rose gently and then, just before reaching the village street, flattened suddenly, thus forming a plateau, on which the roofs of cottages and the police station were just visible.