The postman halted beside his bike propped against the gatepost of Thie Aash, sighed, and turned in his tracks. A small, elderly, tight-laced woman was in the doorway talking away angrily as though they were standing face to face. He couldn't tell a word she said, only see her mouth opening and closing like that of a fish in an aquarium.
"What is it now?"
Thie Aash! House of Peace. What a misnomer! There never would be any peace whilst Mrs. Ashworth reigned there. Gossiping, brushing, dusting, scuttering, shouting, turning the place out of doors and putting it back again. She never stopped! The house stood high on the cliffs on the way to Bradda Head, with a glorious view of Port Erin Bay, the sea in front and the green hills of Man gently unrolling themselves behind. It was a large, sunny bungalow built of stone with wide windows letting in the light and view, a green roof and a broad terrace and rock gardens. It caught the sun from every angle and they could watch it set over Ireland in the evenings. It had cost a pretty penny to build and a prettier penny to fill with its costly furnishings and modern pictures you couldn't make head or tail of.
The postman wished it were his. He looked at the calm waters of the bay, the headlands, and the hills all lit up with sunshine, with vast cloud shadows and little fields to decorate them.
"Though every prospect pleases, and only man is vile. . . ."
Cubbin, the post, was a Methody and he knew of all the goings-on at Thie Aash. Mr. Levis and his bottle-parties, his pretty ladies, and his sinful neglect of what was right and proper.
Of course, Levis was a come-over from the mainland. In his middle forties, he'd arrived with plenty of money, earned in Africa they said, bought one of the finest sites in the South, and immediately begun to disfigure it with a sprawling edifice large enough to accommodate a dozen, instead of his housekeeper and himself. Then the carryings-on had started. Women. . . . Wicked and ungodly ones. . . . Bad enough coming and settling there to reap the benefit of low income tax, without making an exhibition of extravagance and licentiousness.
It all flashed through Cubbin's mind as he walked with disapproval back to the house and within earshot of the shouting Mrs. Ashworth.
"Look here. . . ."
She flung down a packet she had opened on the mock rustic table on the terrace. Behind her Cubbin could see a room furnished in unpolished maple with block floors to match. He didn't like it. It had a half-naked look like the Jezebels he'd seen there with Levis.
Mrs. Ashworth was indicating an envelope with a foreign stamp, addressed to Thie Aash in a spiky foreign hand. It contained a score of other smaller ones, re-addressed from his home in Mrs. Ashworth's illiterate, infantile writing to Mr. Cedric Levis, Hotel Rousseau, San Remo.
"This is the lot I've re-addressed over the past fortnight just as Mr. Levis said I was to do. What's he sent 'em back for?
"Do you hear?"
Mr. Cubbin's mind was on other things. Through the open french window he had spotted over a stone fireplace a picture of a naked woman . . . . Or at least that was what he took it to be, although it was like a fish standing on its tail, pale and phosphorescent, with long hair and two breasts shaped like pears. So that was what Levis had once boasted, in a pub in the Port, that he'd paid five hundred pounds for!
"You're not listenin' . . ."
"He's not sent 'em back. That isn't his writin' on the big envelope. Give here. What's this?"
It was a covering letter, written in violet ink on hotel notepaper. The postman pulled himself together and read it over Mrs. Ashworth's shoulder.
As you have not come to claim your chamber I am sending you back all your communications which have arrived. At the same time find account please for chamber held vacant over period reserved, and not claimed. Your early settlement will find us grateful and please also instruct me about baggage held here unopened. Always at your service. . . .
"He didn't claim his room. He mustn't have got there."
Mrs. Ashworth said it in a hushed voice. She was imagining her employer lying with his throat cut in some dirty foreign back-alley.
"He sent on all his luggage except one small case that he said he might want on the way. I wonder if them foreigners has murdered him for his money. . . . Things happen, you know, and Mr. Levis always looked as if he had plenty."
The pair of them stood there almost in attitudes of silent prayer, pondering the wickedness of the world, trying to think out a solution. A blow-fly wheeled in at the door, looped the loop, and buzzed out of the window. From the distant beach came faint sounds of laughter and screaming. Almost unconsciously the postman swotted a wasp which had settled on his bag.
"What had I better do, Mr. Cubbin? I'm sure something 'orrible's happened to Mr. Levis."
Puzzled and a bit scared, Mrs. Ashworth had lost her aggressiveness and grown weak and womanly, regarding the postman with round, questioning dark eyes. He didn't look much of a tower of strength. Tall, as thin as a rail, with big hands and feet, a large straggling moustache and troubled, kindly eyes.
"There's Ted Lowey. . . . Let's ask him."
If Cubbin, the post, had silently prayed for succour, he couldn't have received a better reply. The answer was slowly floating past on a bicycle. P.C. Edward Lowey was on his way to Bradda Tower where, it was reported, some boys had set fire to the heather. He couldn't see any smoke, but in case his eyes deceived him, he'd thought it best to make the trip. He'd struggled on foot and on his bright new bicycle uphill all the way and now he was hot, breathless and very annoyed at the youngsters who seemed to have discovered the knack of making fire without smoke.
"Hey . . . Ted. . . . I say . . . TED. . . ."
Lowey, large, clean, always benevolent, polite and civil, patiently dismounted. He'd shoved his bike most of the way up the hill and now when he could free-wheel a bit, he'd to get off, and most likely to answer some damn-fool question about rats or cats or perhaps a patch of damp on the sitting-room wall. People asked him all sorts of things.
"What is it, Mr. Cubbin?"
Cubbin, the post, was a Town Commissioner and entitled to respectful address.
"What do you think of this lot, Ted?"
P.C. Lowey turned over the mail scattered on the table with a large forefinger and read the covering letter carefully.
"Well?"
Like a pair of operatic stars singing a duet, Mr. Cubbin and Mrs. Ashworth told the bobby their tale, now one speaking, now the other, then both at once, and finally Mrs. Ashworth alone in a burst of overwhelming coloratura.
The constable listened patiently, passed his finger along his chin, found a part where he had missed with his razor, frowned as he rubbed it again, and then gave judgment.
"Looks a bit funny to me."
"What had we better do?"
"Where did he leave the suitcase he didn't send on in advance, Mrs. Ashworth?"
"He was going by air. But he'd an errand or two to do. He didn't say where. He wasn't one for confidin' in me what he was doing. . . ."
They all looked at one another and nodded. Women!
"Perhaps he left it at the airport on his way."
"Like as not."
"I'll speak to the airport and then to Douglas. Can I use your 'phone? And can I have a drink of water before I do? Dry work all that way uphill pushing a bike."
Mrs. Ashworth turned impatiently to the tap in an inner room, filled a glass, and handed it to Lowey, who eyed it dubiously, wet his lips and teeth with it, and then put it down. No use trying to catch a sympathetic glance from Mr. Cubbin, who was strictly T.T., and president of the local branch of the Band of Hope.
First the airport. Lowey, when the occasion demanded, could be wonderfully sharp and crisp. He got straight to the point and a straight answer came back. Mr. Levis's suitcase was still at the airport, unclaimed in the baggage office, and they'd be very much obliged if someone would come and remove it. Furthermore, Levis hadn't turned-up for the afternoon 'plane from Ronaldsway to London on August 21st, and it had left without him.<
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P.C. Lowey hung-up thoughtfully.
"This is a matter for Douglas," he said at length and dialled exchange and asked for police headquarters. He told his tale and his own conclusions concisely and smartly, and there his work on the case ended. In less than a couple of hours, Levis was identified as the body dredged from the scallop-beds by the Manx Shearwater. Not only had he a plate riveted to his shinbone as a result of a wartime wound of which Mrs. Ashworth was aware, but his dentures had been made and were recognized by a Liverpool dentist to whom they were sent by 'plane immediately after his account was found among Levis's bills.
Once the body was given a name, things began to move.
"An arrest is, we believe, imminent," stated the Manx Clarion at the end of four columns reporting the new developments.
It was the way Inspector Perrick said "Ah" when the reporter questioned him which caused the hopeful comment. There wasn't much went on in the Isle of Man that Perrick didn't know. He took a police car and drove to Peel right away. He didn't even call at the local police-station, but, thrusting his hands in the pockets of his raincoat, left the car in the public car-park and made his way through a maze of narrow streets to a cottage just behind the promenade. He knocked on the door and a little elderly woman with white hair and wearing a large white apron answered it. Her sleeves were rolled up to the elbows and there was a smell of baking on the air inside.
"Good afternoon, Mr. Perrick."
Everybody knew the Inspector without his needing to introduce himself. The woman eyed him anxiously.
"Is Fenella in, Mrs. Corteen?"
"No. Not at this hour. She's at the shop. . . ."
"Her uncle's?"
"Yes. She helps about the place. Can I do anything? What's the matter, Mr. Perrick? Nothing bad, I hope."
The voice with its gentle Manx singsong tones was timid and apprehensive.
"Just a few inquiries. . . . Where's Johnny? Has he got a job yet? By the way, might I come in for a minute? People are beginning to watch us."
He was right. A number of curious neighbours stared hard as they approached the Corteen house and they even walked backwards after they'd passed to be sure of missing nothing.
"Come in."
A small, neat house, two up and two down, furnished simply with cheap furniture. A big living-room with a kitchen in the rear and the stairs rising between. Obviously the home of someone connected with the sea. There were old photographs of sailors on the walls, and on the high mantelpiece over the iron oven-fireplace were four glass floats picked up from the tide-line and used as ornaments, and two model ships in bottles. An old wooden sextant hanging on a nail, and behind the door two peaked fishermen's caps.
Sitting in an armchair by the fireside was an old man in a blue knitted fisherman's jersey and serge trousers. A cold pipe dangled from his loose lips and he didn't move or seem interested when Perrick entered. He was fifteen years older than his wife, had retired from the sea twelve years before, and now, helpless and senile, he sat by the fire all day, looking ahead or at the flames, only speaking when he wanted anything. At his feet, a small child of about two played with a wooden horse.
"She leaves the child with you, then?"
The old woman showed spirit for the first time.
"She's got to earn a living, hasn't she? The money they granted wasn't enough to keep the both of them. She's got to leave the child somewhere. He's a good little boy and isn't much trouble."
She bent and caressed the child, who went on spinning the wheels of the horse's feet and ignored her.
"Poor little thing. That Levis deserves all that's coming to him for what he did. . . God will punish him. . . ."
"He has, Mrs. Corteen. Levis is dead."
The woman reeled back a pace and threw up her hands.
"Dead! How?"
"You'll hear soon enough. I want a word with Johnny. Where is he?"
"Johnny? Johnny didn't . . ."
"Nobody's saying he did. I just want a word with him."
"He's not workin' yet. He's after a deck-hand job on one of the boats, but the season's wrong. He says if he doesn't get somethin' soon, he'll go over to the mainland for work. Like as not you'll find him somewhere on the quay . . . round the boats. . . ."
"Or in the Captain Quilliam?"
"He's a good boy, but the army made him a bit unsettled. It's a shame."
The old man made noises indicating he wanted his pipe lighting. Perrick struck a match, applied it to the bowl, and Corteen drew at it with feeble, rapid puffs. Otherwise, he didn't say a word nor take any interest in what was going on.
Perrick threw a last look round the room. The child playing contentedly with his wooden horse; the old man, stupid and senile, more like an old and tired animal; and the patient old woman bearing the burden of all the family troubles. He raised the latch and went into the street again. It had started to rain and the wind, blowing down the narrow alleys like funnels, plastered it on the front of the Inspector's raincoat. He thrust his hands deep in the pockets again and threaded his way up-town to Michael Street. This was the main thoroughfare and, at one corner, half in it and half in another lane of tall property, stood a pastrycook's shop. J. Quilleash. Baker. Perrick thrust open the door, a bell rang, and the smell of hot bread and spices met him.
Jonathan Quilleash was Mrs. Corteen's brother. He had just entered the shop with a tray of soda cakes and his wife took them from him and put them one by one on plates in the window. When the detective appeared, she advanced to meet him. Quilleash was a first-class baker and boss in his own bakehouse, but socially he was a nonentity. His wife did all the talking.
"Good afternoon, Inspector."
Mrs. Quilleash said it half in inquiry, half in challenge. Everything was straight and above board in their business and she wondered what the police were wanting.
"Afternoon, Mrs. Quilleash. . . . Mr. Quilleash. Is Fenella in?"
"Yes. In the bakehouse. Did you want her?"
"Yes, please."
There was a hush as the baker and his missus waited for the officer to explain, but he didn't. Perrick just stood like a rock until Jonathan went to get his niece.
She entered a bit timidly, dusting flour from her hands. A delicate-looking, attractive girl, tall and slim and perhaps a bit tuberculous. She had the clear, flawless pink complexion which often goes with the type, blue eyes and fair curly hair. A long white smock hid her figure, but she was well aware of her charms. There was a slightly vulgar and uncertain sophistication about her. The style of her hairdressing, the well-manicured and polished finger-nails, the lipstick, the smile, and the way she held her head all indicated the penny novelette addict, the omnivorous reader of women's weeklies and their hints and recipes for beauty and allure.
"You wanted me, Mr. Perrick?"
Fenella's aunt and uncle watched her jealously. Her father was helpless and her mother had no control whatever over her. The Quilleashes and her brother Johnny were the only ones who could take any care of her. She had done well for herself, attended classes in typing and book-keeping, and got herself a job as receptionist in an hotel in Ramsey. Then along had come Cedric Levis, taken her everywhere in his car, bought her clothes and jewellery. Just like the novelettes she read by the dozen. To the last detail, including the illegitimate child, and, of course, the wife overseas who didn't understand him, but who prevented Levis from making an honest woman of Fenella. . . . He gave her two pounds a week, paid through his lawyer.
The Quilleashes strained their ears. Surely, Fenella hadn't been up to some more hanky-panky!
"Have you seen Cedric Levis lately, Fenella?"
She tossed her head.
"No. And I don't want to."
She meant it, too. A decent fellow who would inherit his father's grocery shop in Douglas and who hadn't seemed a bit put-out when she told him about the child, had been paying her a lot of attention, and she saw the chance of settling decently down and forgetting the past.
&n
bsp; "I mean it."
"You won't see him again. He's dead. His was the body the scallop boat brought in the other week!"
Perrick had a sense of the dramatic. He liked to toss information at people like a hand grenade and watch their reactions.
Fenella Corteen turned as pale as death, groped behind her for the solitary chair in the shop, and sat down on it. She didn't seem to know where she was, her eyes open wide and staring, her rather fleshy lips moving without saying anything.
"Feeling all right, Fenella?"
Her uncle was indignant and told the detective so before his spokesman could stop him.
"You shouldn't have given her a shock like that. . . . "
His wife intervened.
"Better see to the loaves, Jonty. Leave Fenella to me."
She took the girl in her ample arms.
"There now. It's better as it is. He'd never have done you any good. He was a wicked man. Don't take on so."
The girl flared up.
"I'm glad he's dead! I don't love him. I never did. But, to die like that and . . . and . . ."
Perrick stood sturdily before her, his hands in his coat pockets.
"And . . . and . . . what, Fenella? Shall I finish it? And just at the time when Johnny had said he'd swing for Levis. That it?"
"But Johnny wouldn't . . . He wouldn't hurt a fly. It was only his temper."
Mrs. Quilleash put her hands on her great hips.
"If you'd come back from overseas . . . from Malaya . . . and found while you was away a dirty scum like Levis 'ad given your sister a baby and not done the right thing by her, what would you have said, Mr. Perrick? Tell me that. What would you have said?"
"Half a dozen soda buns, if anybody's interested in sellin' anythin'. . . ."
A stringy little woman with a rush shopping-bag was eagerly trying to buy cakes and hear what was going on at the same time. Mrs. Quilleash dealt with her automatically and bundled her out.
"Where were you on the afternoon of August 21st, Fenella?"
"What's that to do with it? I didn't kill him. How could I have? He was found in the sea, wasn't he?"
The Cursing Stones Murder (A Cozy Mystery Thriller) (Inspector Little John Series) Page 2
