The Glimpses of the Moon

by Edmund Crispin

  Ticehurst’s in any case rather protuberant blue eyes bulged still further. ‘My God,’ he said, ’that’s not it, is it?’

  ‘It certainly is. Want to take a look?’

  ‘No, thanks, I don’t. Don’t think me impertinent, but why hasn’t East on got it?’ Easton was the County Pathologist.

  ‘He hasn’t got it,’ said Ling, ‘because I wanted to look at it. The Chief phoned me in London yesterday evening, and I phoned Charles and asked him to keep the head here till I arrived. And anyway, it isn’t Easton. Easton’s on leave.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Ticehurst. ‘Well, but he’s got assistants, hasn’t he?’

  ‘It’s not them, either. It’s Honeybourne.’

  ‘Honeybourne? Well, that’s nice and distinguished, of course, and of course, I knew he was living down here, but I thought he’d retired.’

  ‘So he has, technically - though I believe he still does some sort of research. But he’s a personal friend of the Chief’s, you see, so with Easton away, the Chief asked him to take this on.’

  ‘Sounds most irregular to me,’ said Ticehurst. ‘However, the press boys’ll love it. Honeybourne, the greatest forensic pathologist since Spilsbury. Can I tell ‘em?’

  ‘I’d rather you didn’t, not just yet. I don’t want him pestered till I’ve had a chance to talk to him properly myself.’

  ‘You’re the boss.’ Ticehurst heaved himself to his feet. ‘And I mustn’t hold you up any longer. But you’ll do a press conference, of course.’

  ‘Yes, I should think I’d better. Not until after I’ve talked to the witnesses, though.’

  ‘How long will that take you?’

  ‘I can’t really tell,’ said Ling. ‘Till six, perhaps.’

  ‘Can I lay it on for six, then?’

  ‘Yes, all right. I’m due to see Honeybourne at seven, so I shall have to break off anyway, whether I’ve finished or not.’

  ‘Six it is, then,’ said Ticehurst from the doorway. ‘See you then.’

  Ling muttered something which sounded to Widger suspiciously like, ‘Gradely.’

  ‘And good luck.’ Ticehurst waddled out.

  ‘And so now,’ said Ling, ‘we get started.’

  3

  ‘What I want to do,’ he added, ‘is take the whole business in chronological order. Which means starting with Mavis Trent. Anything new there, since the inquest?’

  Widger shook his head. ‘Not a thing. She fell, or was pushed, over Hole Bridge. The Coroner thought she fell. I thought she was pushed. But I’ve got to admit that my evidence isn’t strong. A man’s cheap handkerchief clutched in her hand, some traces on the river bank, the improbability that she would have gone out at that time of night unless it was to meet someone - I agree, it doesn’t add up to much.’

  ‘But now there’s Scorer.’

  ‘Yes. Now there’s Scorer.’

  ‘Scorer who apparently heard someone threatening to go to the police about Mavis Trent.’

  ‘Yes.’

  When did he hear this?’

  ‘The Rector got that out of him. It was Friday night.’

  ‘Somewhere about the time of the murder, in fact. The third murder.’

  ‘Well, yes, that’s what we’re assuming for the moment.’

  ‘Is it possible that Scorer actually witnessed the murder?’

  ‘Quite possible, I should think.’

  ‘It’s extraordinary,’ Ling mumbled. ’Quite extraordinary. Is Scorer a half-wit, or something?’

  ‘Not exactly. He’s just secretive. And, of course, panicky.’

  Ling produced a small triune metal implement from his pocket and began poking about in the bowl of his pipe with it. ‘I’ll panic him all right,’ he said. ‘Withholding crucial evidence – good God, whatever next? Yes, I’ll certainly panic him.’

  ‘He could, I suppose,’ Widger said, ’be protecting someone. Or, since it was night-time, he may not have been able to see who it was… Do we have him up now?’

  ‘Routh and Hagberd really come first. But as far as I know there’s nothing new there either, any more than there is about Mavis Trent. We’re still pretty sure, aren’t we, that it was Hagberd who chopped Routh up? And was responsible for all that foolery with the head, and with the bust of whoever it was?’

  ’Yes, I think we can be pretty sure about that.’

  ‘Are we sure that he was Routh’s murderer?’

  Widger hesitated, then said, The local feeling is that he probably wasn’t.’

  ‘Yes, I know,’ said Ling gloomily. ’But we simply had to arrest him, and after that it was pretty much out of our hands.’

  ‘Agreed.’

  ‘Not very satisfactory … Wait a minute, though, there is something new.’ Ling riffled through the pages of Widger’s report. ‘There’s this note you’ve got at the end here. About Gosprey.’

  ‘Yes, Gobbo. Everyone calls him Gobbo.’

  ‘Gosprey, it says here.’

  ‘I don’t suppose it’s connected in any way with this present case,’ said Widger. ’But Fen volunteered it, so I - ’

  ‘Fen, Fen.’

  ‘The Professor who’s rented the Dickinsons’ cottage at Aller.’

  ‘Oh yes, I remember … Well, so this Gosprey says he was talking to Hagberd, outside The Stanbury Arms, at the time when Routh was being hit on the head in Bawdeys Meadow, two miles away. Is Gosprey here now?’

  ‘Gobbo. No, he’s not. He’s a very old man - and, as I said, it’s nothing directly to do with this new business, so I didn’t have him brought in.’

  ‘Old, you say. Vague?’

  ‘Well, yes, I suppose so, to some extent.’

  ‘He might be getting his times and dates muddled?’

  ‘Yes, I suppose he might. And in any case, there’s Youings to say he’s wrong.’

  ‘Youings, Youings.’

  ‘The pig farmer with the German wife.’

  ‘Yes, I remember now. Youings would be more reliable than Gob - Gosprey?’

  ‘Probably. My guess would be that Gos - Gobbo is confused about which day it was.’

  ‘That’s a relief, anyway,’ said Ling. ‘Be hard for us if it turned out that Hagberd had an alibi. You think we can afford to ignore Gosprey, then, at any rate for the moment?’

  ’Yes, I do. I think that for the moment we’ve got quite enough to cope with as it is. I just added that note to the report for completeness’ sake.’

  In the car-park below, car doors slammed, and car engines started, as media reporters, baulked until the press conference at six o’clock, set off to discover what recreation, if any, the small market town of Glazebridge could offer on a Sunday afternoon.

  Widger said, ‘Scorer now, then?’

  ‘Scorer now.’

  Dishevelled after his night in the ringing chamber, the youth Scorer opened the proceedings by demanding the presence of his attorney - a word which Widger presumed he had got from Perry Mason rather than from, say, Trollope. On being informed by Ling that since he wasn’t, so far, being accused of anything, no attorney was necessary, he first reiterated his demand and then suddenly fell down on the floor.

  ‘My God, he’s having a fit,’ said Ling.

  ‘No, he’s not,’ said Widger. ‘It’s his legs. They’re too shaky to hold him.’

  One on each side, they clutched Scorer under the oxters, levering him up on to the chair recently vacated by Ticehurst. Here he sat, shuddering intermittently and peering at them through his tangle of grubby locks like one of the smaller dogs with hair-impeded vision: a Cairn, a Sealyham, a Skye. Ling went back to his chair behind the desk, Widger continuing to prefer to stand.

  ‘Now, there’s nothing to be afraid of,’ said Ling. ‘You just tell us the truth - the whole truth, mind! - and you’ve got nothing to be afraid of at all.’

  ‘Not a thing,’ said Widger in antiphon. ‘So you just pull yourself together.’

  Scorer licked dry lips.

  ‘First of all,’ said Ling,
‘let’s have your name. Your full name, I mean. Your Christian name.’

  ‘It’s Mr Scorer,’ said Scorer tremulously.

  ‘Your Christian name.’

  Scorer said that he was called Clyde, after a famous criminal.

  ‘Your real Christian name.’

  With the greatest reluctance, Scorer admitted that his real Christian name was Cecil.

  ‘Well now, Cecil, what’s all this about Mavis Trent?’

  ‘Us bain’t,’ said Scorer almost inaudibly, ‘goin’ to tell ‘ee naught.’

  ‘Yes, you are. You’re going to tell us everything.’

  ‘Never ’eard of en.’

  ‘Oh, rubbish. Of course you’ve heard of Mavis Trent. You were talking about her to Professor Fen and the Rector, when you fell off your motor-bike.’

  ‘I never.’

  ‘You most certainly did.’

  ‘No, I never.’

  ‘Now, you just listen to me, Scorer,’ said Widger. ‘You’re in danger, do you realize that?’

  At this Scorer succumbed to a fresh fit of trembling. ‘Danger?’ he whispered.

  ‘That’s right, danger. You know something.’

  ‘Oh, aye,’ said Ling. Holding his pipe by the bowl, he levelled the stem at Scorer like a pistol, even going so far as to squint along it, as if taking sights. ‘Tha knows summat, all right.’

  ‘Something about blackmail,’ Widger went on, ‘and I dare say, something about this murder as well.’

  ‘Bain’t goin’ to tell ’een-’

  ‘Be quiet and listen. Knowing something puts you at risk.’

  ‘Bain’t - ’

  ‘You’re a menace to this blackmailer, this murderer. He may well try to put you out of the way.’

  ‘Put me -’

  ‘Kill you.’

  Scorer stared at them wild-eyed. ’Oh, my God,’ he breathed. ’Kill - kill…’ His voice rose to a shriek. ’No! No!’

  ‘Yes! Yes!’

  ‘You got to pertect me!’

  ’We can’t protect you, Cecil,’ said Ling.

  ‘No, we can’t,’ said Widger. ’Protect yourself, Scorer!’

  ‘Save me!’

  ’But so long as you’ve told us everything you know, there’ll be no point in killing you, and you’ll be perfectly all right.’

  Visibly Scorer made an attempt to master his fears. Visibly he began to consider Widger’s proposition - whose defect, that the murderer might not know that Scorer had passed his information on, Widger hoped was going to pass unnoticed. And it worked. Suddenly, it worked. All at once, Scorer stopped swaying about on the chair as if he were going to faint; he even managed to sit up relatively straight.

  ‘I’ll tell ‘ee,’ he said. ‘I’ll tell ’ee all. And then ’ee’ll pertect me.’

  That’s right, we’ll protect you.’

  Scorer inhaled deeply. ’Well, then …’ he said. ’What ’appened was …’

  4

  On the Friday evening, the evening preceding the day of the Fete, Scorer had gone for a midnight walk. And he was at pains to justify this expedition. First he said that he had wanted to admire the beauties of Nature. Then he said that he was unable to sleep, and had hoped that the night air would make him somnolent. Finally he alleged, with undiminished improbability, that he was a collector of moths.

  ‘Some o’they’s pretty,’he said, apparently in the hope that this display of aesthetic sensibility would lend cogency to his tale.

  ‘Never you mind about moths, Cecil,’ said Ling. ’We didn’t bring you here to talk about moths.’

  ‘Some o’ they’s real pr - ’

  ‘I said, never mind about moths. Just tell us what you saw and what you heard.’

  This he was at last persuaded to do. Shorn of divagations and shivering fits, his narrative amounted to something like this:

  He had set out from the family cottage in Burraford at about twelve, armed with a torch: there was no moon that night, and the starlight was too faint to pick out more than dark masses and blurred outlines. Apparently he had made his way directly to the grounds of Aller House (pilfering, thought Widger disgustedly: moths, indeed), and had there wandered about a bit (dousing his torch, in case the Major happened to be looking out of the window of his basement flat) among the half-finished stalls and marquees.

  One of the erections which actually was completed was the Botticelli tent, all ready for the installation of its pious treasure in the morning; and it was as he sidled towards this that Scorer became aware that he hadn’t the Aller House gardens entirely to himself. Peering round a corner of the rifle range, he saw -and to some extent heard - two indistinct figures in conversation just outside the flap of the Botticelli tent.

  ‘Sex?’ Ling demanded.

  But here, as elsewhere, Scorer was unhelpful. Visibility had been almost nil, the figures mere shadows. What he could say was that one of the shadows had been unusually tall, so if it had been a woman, she must have been a giantess. Then there were the voices: one of them consistently whispered, the other was normal (though ’la-di-da’), but low-toned; Scorer had been unable to make out which of the figures was the whisperer, and had certainly been unable to distinguish anything of what was being whispered. From the other voice, however, he had managed to glean a word or two here and there - Mavis Trent, a letter, the police.

  These tantalizing intimations reduced Ling to a sub-acute frenzy, and he wasted a good deal of time in attempting to get Scorer to enlarge on them. But when the dust had settled, it was found that nothing further had emerged. ’Very well, then,’ said Ling, disgruntled. ’What happened next?’

  And what happened next was certainly sensational enough. There had been a sudden blur of movement, and a loud crack, and the tall figure had collapsed on the ground in a crumpled heap.

  ’Crack!’ Scorer shouted quaveringly, almost falling off his chair at the recollection. ’An’ down ’e went!’

  ‘Crack? Do you mean it was a gunshot?’

  ‘Naw. More like a sort of thud, like.’

  ‘Then why did you say - no, never mind. More like a sort of thud. And then?’

  Then, apparently, the shorter figure had stood quite still for a few moments (looking around him, Widger presumed, to see if the assault had been witnessed). He had then stooped over the taller figure on the ground, and had seemed to be examining its head. Finally he had grasped it under the armpits and dragged it inside the Botticelli tent.

  Scorer had providently remained where he was; wild horses wouldn’t have dragged him any closer. There followed an interim during which nothing much appeared to be happening. Then dim torchlight - so dim as to be almost imperceptible through the canvas walls - was switched on in the tent’s rear section, where all the odds and ends were dumped, and moved about as if its owner were searching for something. Whatever it was, it was soon found. The torchlight steadied; there came a brief hiatus, and then a sound of sawing.

  At this point, Scorer had apparently fainted.

  The first thing he noticed when he recovered his senses was that although the torch was still on inside the tent, the sawing had ceased; the second, that a light was shining in a window of the Major’s basement flat. A door banged, letting loose a tumult of barking; the torch inside the Botticelli tent was extinguished. The barking approached at an even pace, suggesting that its perpetrator was on a leash.

  ‘ ’Twere the Major,’ Scorer explained, ‘taking ’is bluidy span-nel for walkies.’

  Both Major and dog were still, however, a fair way off when the man in the tent decided to make himself scarce. Scorer saw him push his way out into the open - but this time his outline was strange, bulky and distorted (he must have been carrying the head, Widger reflected, and probably the clothes as well). Scorer cowered. But the shadow, unaware of him, was concentrating on the Major, who had now switched on his own torch and was perceptibly heading in his direction. The barking increased in volume; the bulky shadow slipped away into the darkness. And Score
r did the same: he had no wish to be discovered lurking in the grounds by the Major. Creeping away, he was slightly heartened to hear a car start up and move off distantly in the lane; that, he thought, must be the shadow. But he was still suffering from violent palpitations when he got home again, leaving the Major, his cocker bitch Sal and whatever lay in the Botticelli tent alone in the Aller House policies under the wan starlight,

  ‘My God, what a witness!’ said Ling, when Scorer, still clamouring for police protection, had been conducted out of the office and downstairs again by a constable summoned by telephone for the purpose. ’Charles, I suppose that all that was true?’

  ‘Oh, I should think so, yes.’

  ‘I mean, he wasn’t just saying it all to make a sensation?’

  ‘No, no, Eddie. He’d be too afraid of the consequences.’

  ‘So he actually witnessed the murder. That is, unless the tall man was just knocked out outside the tent, and finished off inside.’

  ‘Well, it doesn’t make much odds, does it?’

  ‘It might make a difference to the method of murder.’

  ‘Didn’t Sir John say anything about that?’

  ‘No, he didn’t.’

  ‘Well,’ said Widger, ’my bet would be that the victim was killed outside the tent - probably coshed, like Routh.’

  ‘The same murderer?’

  ‘One supposes so.’

  ‘Or it might be imitative.’

  ‘Possibly … One thing is,’ said Widger with more energy, ’that we shall have to keep after Scorer, and try to get some more out of him.’

  ‘And do you think we’ll succeed?’

  ‘No.’

  Ling sighed. He returned his pipe to his right-hand jacket pocket. Then he fumbled in his left-hand jacket pocket and brought out another pipe. ’Looks as if the Major’s in the clear,’ he remarked. ’That is, if Scorer’s telling the truth.’

  Widger stared. ’Good God, Eddie,’ he said. ’You weren’t suspecting the Major, were you?’

  ‘At this stage, old squire, we’ve got to suspect everyone. Anyway, we’ll see the Major now, straight away, and find out what he was up to.’

  ‘He was taking his dog for a walk.’

  ‘I was thinking that perhaps he might have heard the sawing.’