by Bruce, Leo
“It was Alan’s. He’s had it ever since the war.”
“Did you all know that?”
“Yes. Last Christmas we spent at Mount Edgcumbe, Alan’s house. My aunt generally throws the party, but Anita wanted to. After dinner …”
Priggley interrupted.
“Not amateur theatricals? ”
“Worse. Charades. Alan got it out for something. He looked at it for about ten minutes to make sure it wasn’t loaded, but even then Anita shrieked and told him to put it away at once, which he did.”
“Who saw him lock it up? ”
“All the men, I think. We were putting on absurd disguises up in his bedroom.”
“Richard was there? ”
“Yes.”
“Who was at the party? ”
“Only the family. My aunt, Alan, Anita, their two children, Richard and Pippa. Oh, Wilma was there, too. She couldn’t go home for some reason and joined us.”
“I see. Have you ever seen it again? ”
“No.”
“I gather there was a tennis-party there on Friday afternoon. Were the same men, more or less, in that bedroom? ”
“Yes. But a character from the shop was there—Tofluu We used that bedroom and the women used Lucille’s.”
“Not Lucille? “sighed Priggley.
“The daughter, yes. She was away.”
“And Richard would have had a chance to take the revolver? ”
“I suppose so, yes. I believe he stayed upstairs for a shower when we went down for drinks. But he couldn’t have been planning suicide that afternoon. He was enjoying himself enormously.”
“I’ve said before in this case, the things suicides do are quite incomprehensible.”
“You have. More than once,” said Priggley. “What about this corpse hunt in the woods? ”
Carolus apologized for this.
“Priggley’s so anxious to appear blasé that he behaves like a child. Please forgive him.”
Keith said: “Well, I don’t take it much more seriously than that myself. I know it will be a waste of time.”
Carolus seemed in no hurry to move, and lit a second cigar.
“By the way,” asked Keith, “who was the last person to see Richard alive? ”
“I don’t know that,” Carolus told him. “Quite possibly Wilma Day. You heard her evidence at the inquest, that he drove her to the station from Drumbone House.”
“Yes, but surely … that was only seven-thirty. Don’t we know anything of his movements after that? ”
“Not really. He wasn’t seen going in. He told the man upstairs, Hoskins, that he was going to listen to a Beethoven Trio which was coming on at nine-fifteen.”
“I hope Wilma wasn’t the last person to see him. I suppose someone could have gone to his flat without Slugley noticing? ”
“Someone did, according to Slugley. A boy with sunglasses and a Grammar-School cap who had his arm in a sling.”
Keith stared.
“Charles? “ he said at last.
“It could scarcely have been anyone else. Slugley saw him going out by the service entrance soon after ten-thirty.”
“But what on earth was Charles doing there? ”
“I haven’t asked him yet. I shall,” said Carolus grimly. “He had some reason for seeing Richard, I gather. He owed money to the shop and wanted a saxophone on tick. He wasn’t likely to get it while Toffin was around.”
Keith smiled.
“No. Toffin’s a bit of a watchdog. Pompous little man, but damned efficient.”
“One other thing, Keith. Do you happen to know what your aunt was doing that evening? ”
“No. We never know much of her movements.”
“By her own account she didn’t get back to her flat till ten forty-five.”
“Might have been anywhere. A meeting or anything. She’s a very busy woman.”
“She must be. Does she drive her own car? ”
“Oh, yes. Always. She likes that.”
“Was she in to dinner? ”
“We don’t really have dinner at night. There are two women who work for my aunt, Mrs Runciman and her sister Kate. Middle-aged. Been with her some time. They do the lunch and leave something cold in the Frigidaire, usually. If my aunt and I and Wilma are alone, as we often are, Wilma usually puts it on the table about seven. That evening she was rushing off, as you know, and I got it ready. It was just a cold roast chicken and salad. We had it soon after Wilma had left. My aunt asked her to eat something before she went, but she hadn’t time. I don’t think we were at the table more than twenty minutes, and soon after that my aunt went out.”
“Without saying where she was going? ”
“If she did I don’t remember. I think she called out ‘I shan’t be late’.”
“And she has said nothing since? ”
“No. Why don’t you ask her? “said Keith.
“Your aunt is expert at asking questions, but doesn’t much like answering them.”
“I see what you mean.”
“Now, do we go? “suggested Priggley.
They stood up.
“I warn you it’s a waste of time from your point of view,” Keith said.
“I’d like to see these woods, anyway. I’m surprised they’ve been left standing so long.”
“I believe there’s a plan to build there now.”
“There’s always a plan,” said Carolus.
13
IT was decided that Keith’s car should be left outside the house while they went and returned in Carolus’s Bentley. They passed through Maresfield at five o’clock, and not many minutes later, it seemed, they came to Flogmore village.
“This has been left pretty well alone,” remarked Carolus, seeing the carelessly grouped old cottages and houses round a church.
“They’re just going to start on it,” said Keith. “I read
an article in the county paper last week. It has so far been categorized as an area of ‘high landscape value’. But with the ‘proliferation of households’ …”
“What?”
“At a rate unforeseen by the planners, such unprotected values must go by the board. The ‘rate of occupancy’ in this region has dropped from 33 persons to a dwelling to 3.7, it seems. In-filling …”
“Oh, for God’s sake,” said Priggley.
“At any rate, Flogmore is scheduled as a semi-rural residential area and the woods we are about to go through will disappear before this time next year.”
They drove on by a narrow road between overgrown rhododendrons.
“Take the next to the left,” said Keith. “It’s only a cart-track, so you’ll have to take it easy. All right at this time of year, but tricky in winter. I don’t know how Tom and Florrie managed—they came into the village on bicycles.”
Carolus turned with some difficulty into a sort of enlarged rabbit-run which had branches that met over it. He continued for a hundred yards, then the track had a sharp right bend. The keeper’s cottage, when it came in sight, he reckoned to be two hundred yards from the road.
They pulled up in a clearing. There was an extraordinary, an almost unnatural, peace there. It was not silent, for the wood-pigeons coo’d continuously and there was audible a buzzing undertone of insects. But no dog barked, no human being appeared, and when the engine of the car was switched off it left only a sleepy hum about them.
The soft afternoon light was on the cottage. It had been constructed about a century before, the sort of mock-gothic thing that estate owners built for their lodge-keepers and gardeners, but because it was thatched and had latticed windows and hollyhocks in the front garden it had the prettiness of a coloured postcard, a sentimental, pseudo-romantic prettiness which its position among the trees emphasized. The windows were closed and no smoke came from the chimney.
Keith went up to the front door and knocked, but he did not wait long.
“I thought Florrie might have gone,” he said. “It’s a pity, because I shoul
d have liked you to meet her.”
They peered through the diamond panes of the windows, and at first could see nothing of the dark interior. But as their eyes grew used to it they could make out several tea-chests and general preparations for the removal of the furniture. They walked to the back of the house and found an empty fowl-run and two untenanted kennels.
“It seems an awful shame,” said Keith. “Tom wasn’t old, you know, and they were awfully happy together. I first came to this cottage when I was quite a kid, and I don’t know how often since.”
When they reached the front of the cottage again a postman was approaching on a bicycle. He was a fat young man who seemed to be feeling the heat.
“She’s gone,” he said, rather superfluously.
“Do you know when? ”
“Week-end, it must have been. She wasn’t here on Monday morning. But she never came to the post office to say, and that means I have to come right out here whenever there’s a letter.”
“Are there many? ”
“No. This is the first since Monday’s. I put that in the box. Pity about Tom, wasn’t it? He was a good chap.”
“Will there be another game-keeper? “asked Carolus.
“Shouldn’t think so. They say they’re going to build all over here. Next year they’re supposed to be starting. This’U be the last season’s shooting, I reckon. Are you from the syndicate? ”
“No,” said Keith. “We’re friends of Mrs Lamplow’s. We didn’t know she had already left.”
“Yes, been gone some days. She sold all her livestock last week. Oh, well, I must be getting on.”
He walked up to the front door, shoved a letter through the slot and, climbing carefully to the seat of his cycle, rode away.
“Now,” said Priggley, “what about our walk through the woods? ”
“I’ll take you by the path which Tom used to call his beat. The wood is, roughly speaking, a rectangle, and this path, though it winds a good deal, makes an irregular oval within it. At one or two points it comes right out of the trees, but for the most part it keeps between them. You would have to know the way into it to follow it. Rather like a maze.”
But before they entered the wood Keith called them to an outhouse at the back.
“Have a look at this,” he said.
There in rather dim light they saw an extraordinary piece of mechanism. It was long disused and covered with rust, but its shape could still be seen, like a huge set of artificial teeth made of iron.
“It’s a man-trap,” said Keith. “Tom said they’ve been illegal for more than a century, but it could still be made to work. Look at those teeth! They snap right through a man’s shin bone. In the old days when they were set up in the woods hidden by leaves no one could ever escape from them if they once closed. Tom said his father knew an old man who was caught in one as a boy and was lamed for life.”
Carolus examined the thing.
“You say it could still be made to work? ”
“Tom said so. All it wants is a drop of oil, he told me, and it would be as good as new. But no one would dare set it now.”
“I suppose not. Let’s go on.”
From the cultivated patch behind the house Keith turned sharp right and in a moment entered the wood at a point known to him. It seemed that Tom had kept his beat dear of overgrowth, for they were able to progress in a single file without much difficulty.
“I feel more Fenimore Cooper than Conan Doyle,” said Priggley. “How long do we play Indians on the warpath? ”
“Tom’s beat must be well over a mile long with all its windings.”
They left the smaller bushes and came suddenly to the cool shade of tall beeches with great smooth trunks with little pools of brackish water beneath them. Here it was possible to look ahead for some distance, and the path they were following was no longer easily seen.
“You have to know the way here,” said Keith. “When I first came I used to mark certain trees, but it soon became unnecessary.”
They came to a fallen tree-trunk.
“This was one of our favourite spots,” said Keith.
It was certainly cool and peaceful. The ground was littered with old beechnut husks, but there was no sign of disturbance here. The dark green moss looked untrodden.
They pushed on for a time, entering a thicker wood in which their progress was slower, and once or twice brambles had grown across the path since Tom Lamplow had been here to clear it.
Suddenly Carolus became aware of a smell of putrefaction, and stopped. There was no mistaking that stench—rotting flesh. But Keith smiled.
“It’s all right,” he said. “Not what you think. Come on and I’ll show you.”
They came in a moment on the keeper’s gibbet, a line stretched from tree to tree on which Tom Lamplow had hung the corpses of his enemies, rats, weasels, a stoat or two, hawks, several magpies, two jays and one crow.
“Some keepers shoot owls,” remarked Keith, “but Tom didn’t believe in it. I think he’d rather have shot poachers.”
A few minutes later Keith said, “This is the point about farthest from the house. We start returning now.”
“Glad you told me,” said Rupert. “I’ve lost all sense of direction.”
They came to another clearing, a particularly inviting place in which were some great stones, roughly oblong in shape.
This was where Tom found us picnicking the first day. We had come in from the far side of the wood. A road runs there. These stones made good seats. They’re supposed to have been used for building once. No doubt an archæologist would know all about them—we just sat on them.”
This place, too, seemed undisturbed. But here they rested for a time and smoked.
Another walk of ten minutes brought them, Keith said, quite near the keeper’s house, though they could not see it.
“This is our last haunt,” he said. “It’s an artificial clearing, as you see.”
It was, in fact, a complete circle. Everything had been cleared from it, but the bright grass which grows under trees. It suggested woodland scenes of literature, or perhaps of mythology.
“Don’t start talking about fairies,” begged Rupert, then suddenly asked sharply—“What’s that? ”
‘ That’ was something white a few yards away.
Long before they reached it they guessed what they would find, for this time the stench was unmistakable. It was the body of a woman in a horrid state of recent decay. She wore only an old-fashioned white night-gown, and she lay on her back.
“God,” said Keith. “It’s Florrie.”
He was about to stoop down when Carolus said, “No. Touch nothing.”
He examined the ground closely, but after staring down at the face for a moment or two he kept away from the corpse itself.
“How far are we from the cottage? ”
“Not twenty yards,” said Keith, who looked very white. “You’ll see. Can’t we … can’t we do something? She mustn’t be left like that! ”
“It won’t be for long.”
“Can’t we at least cover her? ”
“We’ll phone the police,” said Carolus. “This is their job. She’s been strangled, I think.”
In a moment they came out of the cover of the trees to the clearing in which the keeper’s house stood.
“I want to look inside,” said Carolus.
“Hell, can’t you do that later? I feel …” Keith looked ghastly.
“Sit down a minute,” said Carolus. “I know it’s rotten for you. But there’s something I must know.”
Rupert tried every ground-floor window, but they were closed and both doors were locked.
“Can you climb up to that window? It’s open.”
The window was at the back of the house, and Rupert pulled himself to the roof of what appeared to be an outside lavatory. From this he reached the ledge and hauled himself up.
“Don’t open anything,” ordered Carolus. “And don’t touch anything. Just look at the
beds.”
Rupert disappeared, but in a few moments returned to the window.
“There’s only one,” he said. “A double bed. It has been slept in and not made up.”
“That’s all I want to know.”
Rupert climbed down again and they went to the car.
“‘Better stop in the village,” he said. “You need some brandy, Keith. I could do with a drink myself.”
“You were right, damn you,” said Keith a little hysterically. “You were determined to find a corpse and you have. Poor Florrie. She never hurt anyone. Why her, of all people? ”
“Pull yourself together,” said Carolus,
“Sorry,” said Keith. “It isn’t just … death. It was … you saw the state she was in. How long do you think she has been there? ”
“Some days, anyhow. Here’s the pub. Come along in. Say nothing here, of course. I shan’t phone from here, I think. We’ll be back in Maresfield in a few minutes.”
Keith recovered quickly, but said little on the way to Maresfield. Priggley suggested that if Keith did not want to come over to Carolus’s home at Newminster, he, Priggley, would be delighted to bring Keith’s sports car in the morning. Keith accepted this offer and Carolus dropped him at Drumbone House.
Priggley remained in the car while Carolus entered the police station and asked at the desk for Detective Inspector Bowler. He was taken to a small office where he met the wiry, intelligent-looking plain-clothes man whom John Moore had described as a ‘good chap’.
Bowler offered Carolus a chair, but seemed determined to let him take the lead in any conversation there was to be.
“I understand from John Moore who is a friend of mine that you resent my investigating in this case,” said Carolus.
“I didn’t say that, exactly,” replied Bowler, but made no effort to explain what he did say.
“You’re convinced that it is a straightforward suicide? ”
“I could not possibly discuss it.”
“Even if I have some information for you? ”
Bowler remained quite unruffled and courteous, but equally firm.
“If you have any information relating to this or any other matter which you know the police require, Mr Deene, it’s your duty to report it. You know that as well as I do.”
