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The Glimpses of the Moon

Page 21

by Edmund Crispin


  For the reporters, it was a barren time.

  Nor, on the Tuesday, were they helped by the inquest, which ran for about ten minutes before the Coroner, at Ling’s urgent request, adjourned it for three weeks. There was evidence of the finding of the body, from Titty Bale, from Luckraft and from Widger. But there was no evidence of identification, no mention of the cause of death, no medical detail; and the Coroner, sitting without a jury, refrained even from saying that he thought it was murder, even though so evidently it had been. He released the body, still armless and headless, for burial, and on the Thursday it was taken from Sir John’s laboratory and put underground, hugger-mugger in the cheapest possible coffin, in Glazebridge churchyard. The Rector attended, to conduct the graveside service, the Press attended, a bored-looking constable attended, and so did a variety of sensation-seekers unconnected with the case. There were no mourners, however, so that the whole business was conducted briskly and with despatch. The one wreath, unticketed, was discovered much later to have been sent by Dermot McCartney, less in a spirit of grief than because he believed that the conventions of his adopted country must be observed at all costs.

  Meanwhile, the police had been furiously busy - and with absolutely no significant results. Widger thought that there could never have been a case with so many possible leads and so little to show for them.

  Reluctantly, the Chief Constable had agreed that extra men were needed, and these had been drafted in, so fulfilling Widger’s nightmare vision of the district (Burraford and its surroundings especially) overrun as if by a plague of blowflies. The extra men conducted house to house interrogations; they sought to identify the two strangers who had passed time in the Botticelli tent during the Fête; they searched out-houses for recently used spades and for blood-stained hammers; they combed fields and woodlands and gardens and lane verges for freshly turned earth; they rummaged for blood-stained clothes; they questioned everyone who might have noticed a car, either at Aller House about midnight on the Friday, or in Sir John Honeybourne’s lane between six and seven on the Sunday (they were not, however, given any reason for this latter question); they reported and reported and reported, triggering off numerous false alarms, all of which had to be checked and none of which proved to be the slightest use. Widger’s small office became a crowded welter of loose papers, files, extra telephones and extra furniture; and in the room adjoining, Rankine and Crumb found themselves hemmed in similarly. Rankine bustled about importantly, insisting on reading even the most hollow, inconsequential and negative bulletins out aloud in their entirety. Crumb, the lethargic tenor of his ways grossly disrupted, was several times forced to remain at his desk until six or even seven. The placid routine of the Glazebridge C.I.D. had never before - not even for Mavis Trent, not even for Routh - been so horridly deranged.

  And the week wore on, and nothing came of any of it: victim and murderer alike remained obstinately unidentified.

  Missing Persons was no good; the C.R.O. was no good; Forensic was no good. True, Forensic did come up with the information that the sack from which Sir John had taken the pig’s head had at some stage been employed for storing potatoes (Arran Pilot, Forensic rather thought), and that the string which tied it at the neck bore faint traces of a common brand of engine oil, and this intelligence led, on the Thursday, to those who grew their own potatoes, or had private garages, or both, being investigated all over again, again without significant results. Interviewed by Ling, the bacon factory stated that it had used the same sort and size of sack for as long as it could remember, and that there must be hundreds of them knocking about; interviewed by a Detective-Constable from the Met., the manufacturers of the sack stated that they had used the same materials for their sacks for as long as they could remember, and that it was impossible to assign a date to any particular one. Police frogmen plunged into the depths of the Burr and the Glaze, coming up again with assorted irrelevant dèbris, and there were even a couple of dogs with their handlers, though what these animals were expected to do, since they had been trained simply to knock people down or to bite them, passed Widger’s comprehension. The witnesses were all questioned a second time, this time in more detail, but failed altogether to cast any fresh light on the problem. There were only two more days to go before the Chief Constable’s ultimatum expired on the Sunday, and Widger and Ling were still no further forward than they had been at evening on the previous Sunday.

  Not surprisingly, they became increasingly morose, their morale markedly lowered by the realization - which had been bound to come in the end - that the news of the victim’s head’s being cheekily filched from them - had somehow leaked. Ling took this very badly indeed. He slunk about the station throwing furtive glances over his shoulder at the men of the uniform branch (who remained, in his presence, conscientiously wooden-faced), in deadly fear that he would catch someone jeering at him behind his back; after the Wednesday, he went out increasingly seldom, pre-empting Widger’s desk chair for most of the day and endlessly re-reading reports; he even abated his smoking. And Widger, though not quite so disastrously affected, was none the less a thoroughly unhappy man. By the Friday, they were scarcely speaking to one another. A dun fog of depression had settled on them, and nothing at all came along to dissipate it

  There seemed to be only one frail hope left.

  Unlike the majority of policemen, Widger had no great objection to, or contempt for, amateur detectives, so long as they didn’t meddle with evidence or get under the feet of the authorities. If they could solve crimes by just sitting in their armchairs thinking, the best of British luck to them. There had been some business about an Oxford toyshop, Widger remembered. Other things too, though the details escaped him for the moment…

  Wan and exhausted from lack of sleep, Widger lunched that Friday at home with his wife. He kept silence, and, being a sensible woman, so did she. Lunch over, he kissed her, returned to the police station, and climbed the stairs to his office. Here, as expected, he found Ling established behind the desk. He was leafing listlessly through a bundle of colour photographs of the body in the Botticelli tent and of its surroundings. On Widger’s entrance, he neither raised his head nor spoke. Widger regarded him sadly for a moment. Then, without himself speaking, he turned round and left the office quietly.

  He went to where the police cars were parked, got into his Cortina, and drove out alone to Aller to talk to Gervase Fen.

  2

  Fen was not thinking about the murder.

  Instead, he was smoking a cigarette and reading The Times Literary Supplement- nowadays vulgarly retitled T.L.S, without even a full stop after the’S’ - one of three special issues given over to modern Albanian poetry. The warm, sunny weather continuing, he was doing this in a deck chair on the Dickinsons’ side lawn. Ellis the tortoise had not been glimpsed for twenty-four hours or more, and conceivably was making a second attempt to hibernate; Stripey the cat had absented himself on one of his priapic itineraries. To the right of the deck chair, on the grass, lay Fowles, John, and Taylor, Elizabeth, temporarily discarded. To its left stood a transistor radio, which was emitting and indeed had been emitting for some considerable time, a symphonic movement of vaguely romantic cast; from the movement’s excessive length, vacuity and derivativeness, Fen judged it to be by Mahler. In the distance, and out of sight, the Pisser was making a new kind of noise, suggestive of a small cataract harbouring a swarm of hornets. And from close to Fen’s ear came a tiny scrunching sound, the product of a late wasp which for reasons best known to itself was boring determinedly into the woodwork of the deck chair’s side support.

  What with all these things, and the modern Albanian poetry, the atmosphere was decidedly soporific.

  Fen was not thinking about the murder because since Monday he had been working quite hard at his book. He had had to go to Glazebridge police station a second time, but his only visitors at home had been his daily, Mrs Bragg, and on one occasion the Major. Apart from the trip to Glazebridge, he had stayed
put.

  ‘Edna O’Brien,’ he muttered, ‘is the Cassandra of female eroticism.’ Certainly Edna O’Brien’s women didn’t seem to get much fun out of sex. If he were they, he would give it up altogether.

  A car crept up the Dickinsons’ stony drive towards him, and he roused himself to look at it. It was being driven by Detective-Inspector Widger, he saw, and he was on his own. More questions, presumably.

  Widger caught sight of Fen over the low beech hedge. He stopped the car opposite the little gate which gave access to the lawn, climbed out, passed the gate, and headed for the deck chair. Fen extinguished Mahler’s violins by means of a useful knob and got up to greet his visitor.

  He offered a drink of tea or coffee. He offered the deck chair. Widger politely refused them all, easing himself down on to the grass with a little sigh of contentment.

  ‘It’s restful here,’ he said.

  Not quite the usual official visit, Fen thought, relapsing into the deck chair, where the wasp was still scrunching away. Not at all an official visit, in fact, for now Widger fell silent, gazing out across the countryside; he was wondering if this was a sort of betrayal - and wondering, too, how he was going to open the conversation. He was very tired, and tiredness had congealed his normal modest self-assurance.

  The ensuing pause lasted for so long that in the end Fen decided he had better help. He said non-committally, ‘I hope the case is going well.’

  ‘It isn’t.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘It’s a devil of a business,’ said Widger with slightly more animation. Relaxing a little, he thrust out his legs and fixed his eyes on his toe-caps. ‘Slippery, you see - nothing at all you can get a grip on.’

  ‘Yes, I can imagine it’s difficult. Have you identified the body?’

  ‘No, we haven’t.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Fen - and was glad that Widger, looking away from him in the general direction of Burraford, was unable to see the surprise on his face.

  And with that, suddenly Widger’s tongue was loosened. Driving over, he had planned this interview carefully: he would be casual, confident; above all, he would preserve a decent reticence. But now, all at once, his good resolutions were swept away. His embarrassment dropped from him, and he found

  himself talking; and talking; and talking. Sprawled on the grass, he told Fen every detail of the case - everything that he and Ling had seen and heard and done, baulking only at the visit to Sir John Honeybourne and the switching of the sacks. Fen, however, noting his hesitation, at this point interrupted for the first and only time.

  ‘Yes, I know you lost the head,’ he said mildly. ‘Very bad luck. Still, it could have happened to anyone - and I certainly don’t see what else you could have done. The Major told me,’ he explained. ‘He didn’t say where he got it from - but I have an idea that by now it’s common knowledge, even if the details are a bit vague.’

  For a moment nervous again, Widger lapsed unconsciously into a childhood Devonism. ‘You must,’ he said, ‘be thinking we’re a pair of girt dawbakes.’

  ‘I don’t think that at all. Please go on.’

  And Widger, his conscience relieved of the burden of treachery, did go on. He went on, all told, for over two hours - and because his eyes were averted, missed the one or two occasions when Fen’s brows lifted. At the end of his recital he was hoarse, and tireder than ever, but he felt purged; though he hadn’t been behaving in the least like a responsible officer of the law, he didn’t care a damn. If the Chief didn’t sack him on Sunday, he was due to retire soon anyway. And as to Eddie, to hell with Eddie. The probability was that he would never get to hear about this visit, and even if he did, and turned nasty about it, let him do his worst.

  Widger stretched luxuriously, and swivelled his head to grin at Fen.

  ‘Well, that’s it, sir,’ he said cheerfully if indistinctly. ‘Any comments?’

  Fen said, ‘I think that now you do need that drink.’ He went into the cottage to fetch whisky, and when he returned, the two of them sat sipping for a space in companionable silence. Finally Fen said:

  ‘You were right. It is slippery. For one thing, although it’s a very far-out guess, I suspect that you have two murderers to look for.’

  ’Two, sir?’

  ’Yes. One for Routh (and I don’t mean Hagberd), and another for Mavis Trent and the man in the Botticelli tent.’

  ‘Any proof of that, sir?’

  ‘No. As I say, it’s a guess. And I don’t at all know who killed Routh. But as regards the Botticelli murderer, I can make a rather closer guess.’

  ‘Again, sir - any proof?’

  ‘Nothing that would really satisfy you, Inspector.’

  Widger swallowed his disappointment, telling himself that he had never really had any great expectations.

  ‘On the other hand,’ said Fen, ‘our Botticelli murderer has been going to a good deal of trouble and risk to muddy the waters. He’s been trying to prevent, or at any rate delay, the identification of his second victim.’

  ‘Agreed, sir.’ This was a conclusion Widger had come to himself.

  ‘Which in turn means that identification would point to him, and to him alone.’

  ‘Yes, sir. I agree again. But we’ve tried everything. We’ve -’

  ‘No, you haven’t Inspector. It ought to be perfectly easy to identify that body.’

  Widger stared incredulously. ‘But, sir, how?’

  ‘Just by making some telephone calls.’

  ‘I think, sir,’ said Widger, ‘that perhaps you’d better explain.’

  Fen explained. And Widger scrambled to his feet with as much celerity as if his host had picked up the radio and hurled it at him.

  ‘But that means - ’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘It means that the way the arm was smuggled out of the tent -’

  ‘Yes.’

  In high agitation, Widger said, ‘I must get back to the station, sir. At once. I must - I must make a start on that telephoning you suggested.’ Recovering something of his official manner, he said, ‘Well, you’ve been most helpful, sir. Very helpful indeed. Thank you. And thank you for the whisky.’

  ‘You haven’t finished it.’

  Widger picked up his glass, drained it at a gulp, and put it down again. He rushed back to his car, and Fen watched in some amusement as he turned it in the space in front of the cottage, and headed down the narrow driveway towards the lane. He was still in sight when a slight hitch occurred. For Fen had more visitors, on foot, stumbling excitedly up the driveway towards him. They were Thouless, Padmore and the Major, and they all looked as if they had been drinking. Confronted with Widger’s Cortina, they temporarily lost their heads. The Major hobbled rapidly to one side, Padmore and Thouless to the other. It was evident that Widger was not going to be able to squeeze between them, so Thouless caught Padmore by the sleeve and dragged him to where the Major was, while at the same time the Major crossed to join them; the situation, though reversed, thus remained as difficult as ever. Padmore now decided to make a rapid traverse and align himself with the Major, but Thouless, while calling out to him irritably, seemed equally firmly determined to remain where he was. So it was still deadlock. Finally, all three of them made up their minds to move simultaneously, and collided in a clump at the centre of the driveway, where they stood irresolutely, blocking Widger’s progress altogether.

  Widger slowed down. He honked his horn. Eventually, he was compelled to come to a stop. He wound down the driver’s window and thrust his face out, saying, Will you get out of the way,’ and this broke the paralysis. Thouless, Padmore and the Major all huddled themselves into the same side at once, and Widger scraped past them, disappearing into the lane with an irate roar of his exhaust. With him gone, they hurried on up the driveway to where Fen was waiting for them on the lawn, and flung themselves down around him on the green.

  ‘That was Widger,’ said the Major. ‘We ought to have told him.’

  ‘We phoned th
e police,’ said Padmore, ‘so there was no need.’

  ‘What’s happening?’ Fen asked. ‘What is all this about?’

  Thouless snorted. ‘You may well ask. Heavens, what an afternoon! I drank too much gin, for one thing, and that never does me any good. It gives me a headache. In fact, I can feel the headache coming on now.’ He dredged in a pocket, producing from it a box of non-ethical, and indeed totally inefficacious, tranquillizers, such as could be bought without a prescription across the counter of any chemist’s. ‘Here, have a Kwye Tewd.’ He offered the box around, but there were no takers, so he ended by cramming a handful of the small white pills into his own mouth. And the Major, who seemed marginally soberer than the other two, said to Fen:

  ‘We thought we really must come and tell you, my dear fellow. It’s Ortrud Youings. She’s bolted.’

  All three of them tried to tell the story simultaneously, so that a good deal of confusion and squabbling resulted. In its main outlines, however, it emerged clearly enough.

  That afternoon, Padmore and the Major had dropped in on Thouless for a drink and a chat. They had originally had no intention of staying very long, but Thouless had been pleased at having an excuse for not going on composing bugaboo music in his hut in the garden, and the revels had prolonged themselves, as these things will. Then at shortly after four the front door bell had rung, violently and repeatedly, and Thouless - euphoric from gin and from the prospect of expanding the party -had gone to answer it, finding himself confronted on the doorstep with a large, bloodied, bruised, hairy young man, dressed in blue jeans and an imitation leather jerkin, and with great grubby bare feet. This vision was at first so agitated as to be barely articulate, mumbling, ‘Fuzz! Fuzz! Telephone! Ambulance! Help me!’ and ‘Oh, my God!’ But Thouless nevertheless conducted him into the living-room with its bust of Cumberland, there compelling him to lie down on a sofa while he supplied witch hazel for the bruises, iodine for the cuts and grazes, and brandy for the stomach. Recovering partially, and watched with acute interest by Thouless’s other two guests, the young man presently managed to raise himself on one elbow and speak rather more lucidly.

 

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