The Chessman

by Dolores Gordon-Smith

  She put a hand to her face and felt for the sodden handkerchief. ‘He said he didn’t care this morning. Well, if he doesn’t care, then neither do I. Bloody man.’ She sat upright and gave a very faint and wobbly smile. ‘I’d better watch what I say. The vicar would have a fit if he could hear me swearing in the churchyard.’

  Isabelle squeezed her arm. ‘Well, he can’t.’

  There was a long pause. Sue brushed her eyes with the back of her hand. ‘I must look a real sight.’ There was another pause. ‘I feel I’ve made rather a fool of myself,’ she added in a small voice.

  ‘You haven’t. If you want my advice, you’ll finish your cigarette, then we’ll go into the vestry and you can have a wash and – have you got your powder compact? Good – you can do your face and no one will be any the wiser. Then we’d really better make a start on doing the flowers.’

  Sue gave a guilty start. ‘I’d forgotten about the flowers. That’s why we’re here, after all. I meant to bring some with me.’

  ‘Never mind. I’ve got lots.’ Isabelle pointed to the trug beside the tomb she had been sitting on. ‘Arthur’s bringing some too, and, if we need any more, I’m sure Mrs Dyson will let us have some from her garden.’

  Sue stooped and picked up her bag. ‘The trouble with revelations is that they always make you feel so chewed-up afterwards.’

  Isabelle gave her an encouraging smile and went to pick up the flowers. ‘You’ll feel better when you’ve had a wash.’

  She led the way round the bulk of the flint-studded wall of St Luke’s. ‘I’ve got the key. I picked it up from Mr Dyson earlier.’ She was making conversation deliberately, to try and give Sue something else to think about. ‘He’s awfully fussy about the key, isn’t he? The church in the village I grew up in was always left unlocked during the day.’

  ‘You couldn’t do that here,’ said Sue, seizing with gratitude on the neutral topic. She waved a hand at the hedges round the churchyard. ‘The church is too cut off. We had a lot of trouble with tramps after the war, with the alms box being broken into and so on, so Mr Dyson decided to keep the church locked.’

  Isabelle turned the key in the lock on the side door into the church and entered the passage that ran into the vestry, her heels clicking on the stone flags. ‘Leave the door open, will you?’ She wrinkled her nose. ‘It smells a bit musty in here.’

  The smell in the passage was actually quite unpleasant. Isabelle glanced up at the window a good ten feet above their heads. An elderly cord was hanging down from it and she gave it an impatient tug. The cord snapped in her hand.

  Isabelle sighed and pushed open the door of the choir vestry.

  In the corner, by the cupboard containing choir robes, stood a stone sink with a roller towel hanging beside it.

  ‘You freshen up,’ suggested Isabelle, ‘and I’ll go and check the flowers in the church. The greenery should be all right and there’s just a chance that some of the other flowers have lasted.’

  With relief she escaped down the passage into the church, pausing on the other side of the door to gather her thoughts. She always experienced a feeling of tranquil pleasure from being in the empty church, with its smell of old hymn books and ancient stone mingled with the scent of beeswax polish.

  Like all well-loved public buildings it seemed, when quiet, to have an air of contented waiting. Motes of dust floated in the pools of coloured light from the stained glass window above the altar.

  Flowers, she reminded herself. I’m here to do the flowers. She looked critically at the arrangements and, picking up one of the large brass vases, went back to the vestry.

  Sue, powder compact in hand, looked up with an enquiring smile.

  ‘The greenery is all right,’ said Isabelle, ‘but the flowers have had it, I’m afraid. Arthur’s going to bring some carnations. We’ll need the smaller vases for those.’

  ‘You get the vases from the church and I’ll look in the cupboard,’ said Sue. ‘Are all your flowers long-stemmed?’

  ‘These are. I asked Arthur to bring some short-stemmed ones when he came.’

  Isabelle returned to the church and tried to lift the biggest vase from its stand. The brass vase, full of water and last week’s flowers, was heavy and awkward.

  ‘Sue?’ she called. There was no reply. ‘Sue? Can you give me a hand with this vase?’

  Again, there was no reply.

  Clicking her tongue in irritation, Isabelle went out of the church and back into the vestry. She glanced down the passage and saw Sue at the cupboard door.

  ‘Can you give me a hand with the big vase, Sue? It’s jolly heavy.’ Sue didn’t seem to hear her. ‘Sue!’ Isabelle called again.

  The smell that she had noticed ever since coming into the passage, musty and unpleasant, had got stronger.

  Sue Castradon still stood rigidly in front of the cupboard in the passage. There was something unnatural in her stillness.

  ‘Sue?’ Isabelle called again, starting to get slightly worried. ‘Sue? What is it?’

  With an effort Sue turned her head. ‘Isabelle,’ she whispered, ‘come and look at this.’ Her voice cracked. ‘There’s flowers,’ she said. There was a rising note of hysteria in her voice. ‘Flowers. I’ve found some flowers. Oh my God, flowers!’

  Puzzled, Isabelle went obediently forward. The bad smell got worse. Much worse.

  Then she looked in the cupboard. At first she couldn’t make any sense of what she saw.

  In the cupboard, where she expected to see nothing but spare flower vases and old hymn books, was the jumbled mass of a tartan rug with handfuls of decaying lilies scattered over the top. Flowers.

  The rug was rolled together with a couple of large joints of meat, the sort of joints that were hung up on hooks at the back of a butcher’s shop.

  Then Isabelle realized what she was looking at, and screamed.

  FOUR

  Sue backed away from the cupboard, her hand to her mouth. ‘It’s an animal,’ she whispered. ‘A dead animal. A pig or something. It’s horrible. Who’d put a dead pig in here?’

  Isabelle shook her head desperately, feeling very sick. ‘It’s not an animal,’ she managed to say. She clutched onto Sue’s arm and drew her away. ‘We’ve got to get help. We’ve got to tell someone.’

  She turned her head as she heard footsteps outside. With the sight of that thing in the cupboard before her, she felt panic rise as the door from the churchyard opened. She gave a sob of relief as Arthur, holding a wicker basket of flowers, came in.

  He stopped dead as he saw Sue and Isabelle. ‘Isabelle? What’s the matter? What’s wrong?’

  Isabelle flung herself into his arms. Her face buried in his chest, she gasped out her story in incoherent sobs.

  Arthur, his arms tightly around her, looked over her shoulder into the cupboard. He swallowed hard, then reached out an arm to Sue, who was still standing, rigidly gazing into the cupboard. ‘Sue? Come on, Sue. Come with me.’

  Like someone in a dream, Sue walked backwards from the cupboard.

  Arthur, keeping his own emotions under tight control, realized she was badly shocked. Talking very gently, he managed to get both Isabelle and Sue out of the passage and back into the open air of the churchyard.

  Taking Isabelle’s hands in his, he gripped them tightly. ‘Isabelle, I’m going for help. Stay with Sue. She needs you.’

  Isabelle drew a deep, shuddering breath. ‘Be quick,’ she managed to say. ‘Please be quick.’

  They seemed to be alone in the churchyard for a long time. The sun shone down and the wind rustled the surrounding trees. Birds sang, an occasional dog barked and then – thank God! – the gate creaked open and Arthur, together with Mr and Mrs Dyson, came hurrying up the path.

  ‘You poor dears,’ said Mrs Dyson, her plump, motherly face alight with such kindly concern it nearly made Isabelle cry. She put an arm round Isabelle. ‘What a dreadful thing to happen.’ She looked at Sue. ‘Come over to the Vicarage and we can have a nice cup of tea.
’

  With Isabelle and Sue safely taken care of, Arthur led the way into the passage.

  Mr Dyson looked into the cupboard. He started back with a yelp of horror. ‘I hardly believed you, Captain Stanton. I couldn’t credit what you said. It’s worse than anything I saw in the war.’ He put his hand to his mouth. ‘It … it is human, is it?’

  ‘It looks human,’ said Arthur, tightly.

  Mr Dyson, very white-faced, reached out a hand to the thing in the cupboard. ‘Then we have to treat it with respect.’

  ‘Leave it!’ Arthur’s voice was sharp.

  Mr Dyson turned to him in bewilderment. ‘We can’t leave it, man. I was going to cover it up. This was a human being, God help him.’

  ‘We mustn’t touch anything before the police come,’ insisted Arthur.

  ‘The police?’ Mr Dyson sounded dazed. ‘Yes, I suppose we’d better get the police.’

  Arthur took control. It was obvious that Mr Dyson, robust though he was, was absolutely floored by the sight of the thing in the cupboard.

  ‘We have to leave everything exactly as it is, lock the church, go back to the Vicarage and ring the police,’ insisted Arthur. ‘Not the local man,’ he added, seeing Mr Dyson was about to protest. ‘This is far beyond him. I’m going to ring Superintendent Ashley.’

  Superintendent Ashley of the Sussex Police was, as Arthur explained, first to Mr Dyson, then to Mrs Dyson and finally to Sue Castradon, an old friend.

  He was also, as Arthur thankfully reminded himself as he heard Ashley’s thoughtful Sussex voice over the telephone, too experienced to waste any time in demanding details and explanations that he could better see for himself.

  ‘You’ve done exactly the right thing, Captain Stanton,’ Ashley reassured him. ‘I’ll be there as soon as I can. I don’t suppose Haldean’s there, is he? No? Could you get hold of him? I’d like to know what he thinks about it all. He’ll want to see that Mrs Stanton’s all right, I know, and, speaking for myself, I’d like to have him involved. This sounds like his sort of problem.’

  ‘Who’s Jack Haldean?’ asked Mrs Dyson curiously, when Arthur explained he wanted to make a trunk call to London to speak to Jack.

  ‘He’s my cousin,’ said Isabelle. ‘He writes detective stories. Superintendent Ashley knows him. He’s come across this sort of thing before.’

  ‘Dead men in cupboards?’ asked Mrs Dyson.

  ‘Murder.’

  With some difficulty Jack parked the Spyker beside the churchyard wall, squeezing it under the shelter of the overhanging hedge in the line of cars, tradesmen’s vans, and carts with patiently waiting horses.

  St Luke’s, a square, flint-studded Norman building on the outskirts of the village, stood at a crossroads. A black closed van was drawn up to the side of the lichgate. Jack could see policemen in the churchyard and, beside the lichgate, two policemen stood solidly on duty, barring the way into the church to the knots of gossiping spectators gathered on the road.

  Jack made his way through the crowd to the policemen. From the murmured comments of the crowd and the expression on the faces of the policemen, Jack knew what they were thinking as clearly as if they’d written it on a banner. Amongst the crowd of fair-haired, blue-eyed Sussex villagers, he looked, with his dark Spanish eyes and olive skin, completely foreign. He could see the surprise in policemen’s faces as he introduced himself and they heard his completely English voice.

  ‘Major Haldean?’ said one of the men, his face clearing. ‘We’ve been expecting you, sir. Superintendent Ashley asked you to go straight into the church.’

  Ashley was standing by the porch, finishing a cigarette. He had first met Jack a few years ago, when an ex fellow officer of Jack’s was found dead at the Breedenbrook summer fête. His face lit up when he saw him. ‘Haldean! I’m glad you found the church all right.’

  ‘I couldn’t miss it,’ said Jack. ‘It’s good to see you again. Thanks for asking me. If Isabelle’s going to find bodies, I want to know what’s going on. How is she?’

  Ashley pulled a face. ‘As well as can be expected. The two ladies were completely bowled over, and no wonder. It’s good of you to come down from London at a moment’s notice like this.’

  ‘That’s all right,’ said Jack easily. As a matter of fact it had involved some very last-minute change of plans, including putting off a meeting with his editor and scribbling a note to Betty Wingate cancelling dinner that evening, but he didn’t see why Ashley should be bothered with his domestic arrangements. ‘I haven’t seen Isabelle or Arthur yet, but it sounds absolutely gruesome.’

  ‘It is,’ agreed Ashley. ‘It turned my stomach. How anyone could do such a thing beggars belief. I know you’ve come across some sights in your time – so have I – but this beats them all. Captain Stanton and the vicar, Mr Dyson, said it was worse than anything they’d seen in the war. What makes it worse is where it is. To find such a thing in a church just seems wrong.’ He threw his cigarette away. ‘Let’s go in.’

  He led the way round the side of the church and in through the side door. ‘The cupboard’s not in the church itself but in this passage,’ he explained. The door to the cupboard, Jack saw, had been pushed to. ‘I’ve had everything photographed and fingerprinted, but I didn’t want anything moved until you had a chance to see it.’ He grasped the handle of the door. ‘Here we are.’

  Jack drew his breath in.

  On the middle shelf lay the crumpled-up naked body of a man rolled in a Royal Stewart tartan travelling rug. Handfuls of lilies lay scattered forlornly across the corpse.

  The face had been horribly disfigured by heavy blows. The hands and feet were missing, roughly severed at the wrists and ankles, and the skin of the left upper arm had been hacked away, leaving it raw.

  A dark-stained gash of a stab wound over the heart seemed inconspicuous by comparison, but Jack was willing to bet that was how the man had died. There was no blood on the wood of the cupboard. Those injuries had dried before the body was placed there, which meant, of course, that the poor bloke had been killed somewhere else.

  And why put flowers on the body? Those flowers, with their mockery of the dignity of a funeral, sickened him.

  ‘My God,’ he said in a low voice. ‘This is like something from a nightmare. Have you any idea who the poor beggar was?’

  Ashley shook his head. ‘No. The local doctor, Dr Lucas, thought the man must be in his late twenties or early thirties, but apart from that, we know virtually nothing. I’m fairly sure he’s not a local man, because we’ve got no reports of anyone who’s gone missing hereabouts who’d fit the bill. There is this, though.’

  He took a torch from his pocket and, snapping it on, reached forward and lifted one of the body’s arms so it was elbow down. ‘Have a look at these needle marks, Haldean. Dr Lucas spotted those right away. I don’t know if it’s a course of treatment or if he doped himself.’

  Jack took the torch from Ashley and examined the marks. ‘Dope, I’d say. Look at the bruising round the marks. I doubt any doctor would be so careless so often.’ He shook his head, puzzled. ‘But if he was a dope addict, that’s a facer. I wouldn’t expect to find a drug addict in a sleepy Sussex village. Mind you, I wouldn’t expect to find a mutilated corpse in a church cupboard, either. It doesn’t add up, Ashley. If the man’s not from here, why bring him here?’

  ‘Maybe the murderer wanted to shock everyone,’ suggested Ashley. ‘It seems crazy to me and maybe it is.’

  ‘Crazy,’ murmured Jack. ‘Yes, it does look that way.’ He glanced at Ashley. ‘It’s certainly shocking enough. Have you any idea when the poor beggar died?’

  Ashley shrugged. ‘He’s obviously been dead for some time. I’ve asked the local man, Dr Lucas, to perform the post-mortem. He’ll know more when he’s done it, but he thinks that the man’s been dead anything between three to six days. He says that there’s too many variables for anyone who knows his business to be any more definite than that. I’m hoping to narrow the time down,
but I know from experience it can be hard for a medical man to give an accurate time after a couple of days. I’ve done all the basic procedures, of course, but I can’t say they told us much.’

  He indicated the stone-flagged floor. ‘As you can see, there’s no chance of any footprints in here and there’s none outside, either.’

  ‘Did you find any fingerprints?’

  ‘Very few. I think the killer was wearing gloves. The prints we did find belonged to Mrs Stanton, Mrs Castradon, Captain Stanton and the vicar. I matched those up this morning. I must say, I’m not surprised that the murderer didn’t leave his dabs.’

  ‘Neither am I,’ agreed Jack, shining the torch into the cupboard. ‘Everyone knows about fingerprints these days.’

  All the things that had been on the shelf – flower vases, a roll of red flannel with Merry Christmas embroidered on it, a miscellaneous assortment of old hymn-books – had been thrust roughly to one side.

  Jack shuddered. He had seen badly mutilated men in the war, but the pathetic ordinariness of those everyday things surrounding the body stuck in his throat. ‘Look at it, Ashley,’ he said quietly. ‘All those old fête banners and prayer books and things, and slap in the middle of it, a naked man with no hands, no feet and his face caved in.’

  ‘Not entirely naked,’ corrected Ashley. ‘There’s this tartan rug.’

  ‘It doesn’t cover much, does it? I think the body was probably wrapped in the rug. A full-grown man’s a heavy thing to carry, so the murderer probably used the rug to drag the poor beggar along. Which means, of course, we might be able to find traces of where it was dragged from.’

  ‘I was hoping so, I must say.’

  ‘What about the lilies?’ Jack reached forward and picked up one of the lilies and looked at it with distaste. It had a many-leafed stem with a white, trumpet-shaped flower on top. Yellow in the centre and streaked with pink on the outside, it still had the characteristic stringent lily smell that always reminded him of disinfectant. ‘I never did like lilies,’ he murmured.