A bit dotty, thought Littlejohn. Better humour him and get him calmer before questioning.
“A pity that. How’s it come about?”
“Somebody put ’em ’ere to spite me. Last year, I won first prize at Stalden Show with me caulies and me marrers. Somebody borne it agen me. Put a blight on me, that’s wot they done. Evil eye, that’s wot it is. Never been no slugs or leatherjackets on this plot afore. Now look at ’em.”
He thrust the tin, half-filled with seething insects, under the detective’s nose.
“Look at me caulies…look at ’em…”
They certainly looked motheaten.
“Slugs is best caught after dark. Hunt ’em with a lamp, I do. Squash ’em to a jelly! A pulp!”
He eyed Littlejohn suspiciously.
“Wot you want? If yer from the landlord, you’ll get no rent. Land wi’ a blight on it ain’t gettin’ no rent o’ mine. You jest shift these slugs and leatherjackets fust…”
“I’m a police officer and I’d like a word with you about what happened on the night Mr. Wall died…”
“I don’t know nuthin’. Too busy. Ain’t time fer botherin’ in other folk’s troubles. Too many o’ me own…A detective, are yer? The very man I want…Look at that…”
He thrust a horny hand among his rags and produced a dirty piece of paper which he brandished at the Inspector.
Littlejohn could hardly decipher the uncouth handwriting in pencil amid the surrounding filth.
Six little collyflowers
Swanking on their own,
Up come six letherjackets,
Give a dog a bone.
Evidently a joke played by some rival or spiteful trickster. The man had taken it to heart.
“Detective…eh? Tell me who wrote that and I’ll tell yer who done this.”
“Well, suppose I finish what I’m on at present and then we’ll talk.”
“Ain’t got no time for talkin’. Got to get on with this. Show’s in three weeks…and look at ’em.”
The man was almost weeping.
“Just tell me one thing. Were you here the night before last?”
“Night it rained so ’ard? Yes. I’m ’ere every night. Can’t let these get better o’ me afore the show.”
“Before the rain came, I mean.”
“Before and after, I waz ’ere.”
“Did you see anybody prowling about the back of Mr. Wall’s place just before black-out?”
“Too busy wi’ me own devices to be noseying in other folk’s. But I did see somebody.”
“Who?”
“Dunno. Too busy. Chap came along that back road there. Stopped by the gate, got over and went in Wall’s by the back way.”
“Sure?”
“Course, I’m sure! Thought it was the landlord comin’ for rent he’s not goin’ to get. But it wasn’t.”
“What kind of a man?”
“Dunno…didn’t notice. Had a raincoat and hat pulled over his eyes.”
“He came round the field-road; not through the village?”
“I said so, didn’t I? I dunno any more and haven’t time to talk…”
“Would that be after ten, sure?”
“I said so, didn’t I? What yer botherin’ me for? Clock struck hal’past-ten as I looked up…”
“Sure you heard it?”
“Googodamighty…caren’t you believe wot I sez? I heard the clock ’cos I wuz listenin’, see? I got to fasten up the ’ens. Foxes about as well as slugs ’n leatherjackets. Fasten up the ’ens and get me supper jest afore black-out, so I won’t need to draw me curtains, see? Otherwise, that blasted Mellalieu ’ll be on me and I got enough troubles without ’im. Now leave me in peace, mister…”
“Very well. Thanks, and I hope you win the prize.”
The scarecrow growled and resumed his hunting with grunts and cries of hatred for his victims. Before Littlejohn turned to go, the poor fellow had forgotten his presence in the heat of the chase.
The detective followed the road indicated by the smallholder as being the one along which Mr. Wall’s late visitor had arrived on the night of the crime. Not far past the market-garden, it diminished into a mere earth track, passed through a field and a spinney and then by thick woods, which apparently surrounded some old house or other. Leaving the woods, the path again took to the fields and finally joined the main road through the village before the houses began. An excellent way of arriving at The Corner House unseen, for the track passed no dwellings and at dusk, when the intruder had used it, he was most unlikely to have passed anyone. Added to this, he had worn a hat shielding his face and presumably had taken care not to be seen by any chance strollers, lovers and the like, on the way. If he were one of the villagers, he had merely needed to make his way out of the village until he reached the beginning of the path and then follow it in its semi-circular detour, skirting all the houses, to the back of the bonesetter’s.
Littlejohn pondered the case as he returned to the High Street.
Motive as yet unknown. Opportunity, however, had arisen through the absence of the housekeeper. Had old Wall made an appointment with his visitor? Had he let him in by the back way himself. Or, had the unidentified man heard of Mrs. Elliott’s absence, gained entrance in some way and been waiting for the old man when he returned from his evening drink? There were many questions awaiting Mrs. Elliott on the morrow.
The Inspector reached the main street just in time to see the barrel-like form of Goodchild disappearing into The Mortal Man. Mrs. Harris, too, bustled along the street with a monstrosity of a hat on top of her head, apparently off on some errand of mercy or gossip. From the house of Dr. Keating a hatless man emerged. Idlers standing in the square greeted him. “Evenin’, doctor.” Presumably the local representative of the orthodox school. Littlejohn didn’t much like the look of him. He was small and plump, with a receding forehead and a long nose. Shabbily dressed in tweeds with a disordered soft collar and a rambling tie. His thin hair blew over his eyes in the evening breeze.
The doctor strutted to the gate, started his car and tore away out of the village.
“Off on another spree,” chuckled a yokel, propping up the window of the saddler’s shop.
Littlejohn nodded to the man who had addressed him.
“That so?” he said. “Is he a bit of a wild ’un then?”
“Not ’arf, ’e ain’t. Never see such a chap fer moppin’ up the whisky!”
“By the way, who’s the old man on the allotment behind the Walls’ house?”
“Oh, Daft Dick, you mean. Aye, thinks somebody’s filled ’is plot with weeds and plaguey pests to stop him winnin’ prizes at the show. Dick Pottinger, that is. Lost his wife last summer, poor devil, and it’s turned his brain a bit, that has. Lives alone, and that don’t do ’im no good.”
An old gaffer, more ancient even than the one previously swallowed-up by the village inn and with his face completely lost in a foaming white beard, emerged from a cottage and crossed for his nightcap at The Mortal Man. He was more nimble on his feet, however, and seemed in a tearing hurry to be getting to his destination.
“Hey, grandpa, ye’ll be meetin’ yerself comin’ back if ye bustle like that,” shouted one of the idlers.
The ancient was too intent on the matter in hand to heed his tormentor. He was under the thumb of his masterful daughter-in-law and she’d just granted him half an hour’s leave. Almost trembling with eagerness, he entered the dark portals of The Mortal Man.
Littlejohn followed him in.
Chapter VI
Mortal Man
What hempen homespuns have we swaggering here?
…I’ll be an auditor;
An actor too, if I see cause.
—Act III. Sc. I.
Littlejohn entered the bar-parlour almost unnoticed, for a diversion was
going on. It was the nightly pleasure of certain regulars of The Mortal Man to bait the two oldest inhabitants of Stalden as they took their nightcaps. The detective walked right into such a bout.
The ancient of days who had just preceded him held the floor and was pitching into his opponent, the one with the long beard whom Littlejohn had encountered earlier in the evening.
“And who told you, Ben Beales, as moi insides weren’t so good? You made it up, you did, to disgrace me. My insides is better’n yours any day, in spite o’ the fac’ as Oi can give ’ee ten years.”
The old one’s voice emerged from his froth of whiskers, shrill, sibilant, telling of no teeth.
“Oi on’y sez as yore Mary sez to my Jane, as yore innards waz on’y pretty middlin’…”
“Troi to disgrace me be’ind me back, Ben Beales. Jealous, that’s wot you be…”
“Oi bain’t, Sam, Oi bain’t…”
The elder of the two thrust forth his foaming beard until it almost touched the dirty grey one of his rival. They tottered at each other as if about to execute some senile polka.
“Oo be the oldest o’ we two?” quavered Sam Meads.
“You be, Sam, you be…” muttered Ben with some reluctance.
“Then don’t argew,” hissed the winner triumphantly.
“Oh, that’ll do,” grumbled a dark man, drinking quietly in a corner. With a wooden leg and a patch over one eye he would have looked like Long John Silver.
It was said in Stalden that in his nightly prayers to his Maker, Ben Beales asked for the speedy death of his rival, Sam Meads. Ben was eighty-five; Sam ninety-four, and Ben had long felt that his rival was hanging-on to life out of sheer cussedness and for the pleasure of doing him out of the honours of being oldest inhabitant and taking the drinks that go therewith. Sam had sworn to outlive his would-be supplanter.
“Ale bain’t wot it woz,” said Ninety-four, lowering half a pint. “Now when I fust started drinkin’ ale, about ten I’d be, Ben there wasn’t born then…”
“’Ow do you know, Sam Meads?” protested his opponent whose hand trembled so much with age and rage that he poured his beer down his beard.
“Wuz fergettin’. You’m a forriner an’ not o’ these parts o’ Norfolk, Ben,” retorted Sam, his temper restored by this bright sally.
“Bin ’ere seventy-noine year, man and boy!” shouted Eighty-five querulously.
“Fer God’s sake put a sock in it, you two,” snarled Long John, a local gamekeeper. “Dammit, we come ’ere fer a bit o’ peace and pleasant company. Wot do we get? Two potty old curmudgeons argufyin’! Two as ought to know better and be settin’ an example to the rest. Go ’ome, the pair of yer, an’ get yer datters to tuck yer in yer little beds…”
There was a loud burst of laughter and the mention of their daughters seemed to remind the two ancients that they were out on ticket-of-leave and had better be off. Leaving someone else to pay for their drinks, they shambled out together, glaring at each other, presumably intent on renewing the contest on their way home. Had one died that night, the other would speedily have followed him. Each constituted the other’s sole interest in life!
This comic prelude gave Littlejohn a chance to get settled in the company and his share in the laughter broke down any barrier which might have arisen against a stranger. They were a sociable and merry lot in the inn that night.
Once the old boys had cleared the stage, the more serious business of discussing the murder began.
“Who’d a thought of anybody wantin’ to do fer old Wall,” said a little weasel-like fellow, wiping the froth from his moustache on the back of his hand.
“And why not?” roared Long John aggressively. “Knew all the secrets of these parts and the folk in ’em, didn’t ’e? Like as not, somebody told ’im too much, thinkin’ they waz dyin’ like, and then got better and were sorry for it.”
“Oh, come, come,” said Weazel. “Secrets o’ these parts ain’t as bad as all that.”
“That’s roight,” said a tall, lean man, whose face seemed carved in melancholy lines from granite.
“I bet all of you’s got some secret or other ye’d nearly rather kill somebody than yer wife, children, or parson, or neighbours should know. An’, like as not, if you waz at death’s door and got somebody like old Wall, kindly, friendly, one-of-ourselves sort o’ doctor, you’d tell ’im yer sins ’stead o’ to the vicar, ’oping to eaze yer conscience. Then you gets better, see? Wotyer feel like?”
“Oh, come off it, Steve,” said the cobbler, apparently coming out of a trance and joining in. “Your job’s killin’, ain’t it? But yer shouldn’t think killin’ a yewman bein’s as easy as killin’ a stoat or somebody’s cat as is pinchin’ yer pheasants.”
“Thasright,” ejaculated Granite.
“An’ when they found the old chap hung up there, o’ course, Doctor Keating wasn’t in. Never is when he’s wanted. I hear they ’ad to send to Olstead fer a doctor,” grumbled a little, bilious-looking fellow, with red hair, disgustedly thrusting his nose into his pint pot.
“Oh, like as not, wenching all over the countryside,” said Long John with an oracular sweep of a large dirty paw.
“Maybe it’ll turn out to be suicide, after all,” said a meek man, baring his yellow teeth in a smile and patting his bald pate as though either blessing himself or stimulating his brains to activity.
“It’ll wot?” said Weazel. “Not on yer loife, Mr. Toft, not on yer loife. Wot would Mr. Wall be wantin’ ’anging himself for? And, if wot I ’ears is k’rect, strangling hisself afore he slings hisself up…”
Subdued laughter greeted this ironic gem and Weazel, with a nod in Littlejohn’s direction, added:
“Bet ’e could tell us a thing or two.”
To which Littlejohn replied that he couldn’t, that he was a new arrival, and that he didn’t believe in combining duty with relaxation.
“I’d say the doctor…Keatin’, I mean. I’d say he done it,” boldly said the cobbler, now well in liquor and therefore throwing caution to the winds.
“An’ why?” asked the mellifluous Toft.
“Remember the row they ’ad ’bout little Molly Selby’s collar-bone? ’Ad Keating found it was broke? Not ’e. Remember ’ow Keating lost patients and respec’ o’ half the village through it? I say Keatin’ done it afore he lost all his practice to Wall.”
“Get away!” grumbled red-head. “That rate we’d all be killin’ one another. Yer don’t kill a chap because he pinches a bit of business from yer.”
Red-head was doing a bit of boot repairing as a sideline in his spare time!
“S’right,” intoned Granite.
“P’raps Mr. Wall hanged himself because Miss Cockayne’s goin’ to marry Rider,” persisted the pacific Toft. “He was fond of Betty Cockayne, you know. Folk did say…”
“Now, now, now,” rumbled Long John, whose special function seemed to be to keep the party clean and orderly. “Old Wall was a particular friend o’ Miss Cockayne’s, granted. But more like a father, that’s all. If she were weddin’ a good chap, nobody’d be more pleased than Wall. Some might like Rider. I don’t know whether Wall liked ’im. I don’t. Too sarcastic fer me. A deep ’un. Still, Wall might a’ liked ’im. But get it out of yer ’ead, Mr. Toft, as Mr. Wall done fer himself. Remember, strangulation ’appened before he was hung. Keep on rememberin’ it and don’t be so persistent with yer suicide!”
Mr. Toft subsided, squashed, but goodwill reasserting itself, he ordered and paid for a pint for Long John to show there was no ill-feeling.
“S’right,” muttered Granite, who by this time was in no condition to differentiate between right and wrong.
“Waddabout Dr. John from London? Inherits all the old man’s wealth, as like as not,” said Weazel. “’E might a’ got tired waitin’ and done ’is uncle in.”
“A proper
gentleman is Dr. John. If you must ’ave a doctor fer a murderer, ’ave old Keating. Come to that, ’e is one already, judgin’ from number o’ folk he’s sided off into churchyard,” said red-head, and almost yelled his head off with laughter at his own wit.
“Well, who could ’ave done it then if it’s not suicide?” whispered Mr. Toft.
“Don’t ask me,” replied Weazel. “Ask the perlice.” And he gave Littlejohn a dirty look as though resenting his silence.
“Time, gentlemen, please,” said the landlord, bustling in.
“Thasright,” said Granite, and without another word staggered out into the night.
Littlejohn ate his supper and retired to bed. Before he turned-in he wrote in his notebook the names which had been bandied about in the parlour, just to keep them in mind:—
Dr. John Wall.
Dr. Keating.
Miss Cockayne.
Mr. Rider.
Then he climbed into his old-fashioned four-poster with its sweet-smelling sheets.
To-morrow, the inquest, Mrs. Elliott, the vicar, John Wall, Cockayne, Keating, Rider…
He fell asleep.
Chapter VII
Parson
This man doth present Wall.
—Act V. Sc. I.
After breakfast and as he waited for the arrival of Wall’s housekeeper in the village, Littlejohn turned over the pages of the scrap-book which Gillibrand had left with him the previous day. It consisted almost entirely of newspaper cuttings, neatly pasted in chronological order, with here and there a few leaves apparently cut from some local guide book or history and dealing with the Stalden “doctors”.
There were accounts of visits by persons of moderate eminence to the unqualified consultants. Such extracts came from the Olstead Sentinel, a local organ, and were obviously not “news” enough for the great dailies. Now and then, however, some instance did crop-up where wide publicity had been given to the doings of one or another of the Walls. One was a court case in which some doctor had brought an unsuccessful libel action. That had been years ago, against Old Samuel Wall, now, Littlejohn hoped, with God. One of the Taylors, too, had evidently overstepped the bounds of professional etiquette by taking over a case from one of the so-called quacks and been hauled before the medical powers-that-be. Escaped with a telling-off instead of being removed from the register.
The Dead Shall be Raised and The Murder of a Quack Page 20
