The furnace of flames reached the chemicals of the inner room and one by one ignited them...
Those below were amazed to hear a mighty rushing noise and see, propelled from the window, a large white-hot rocket, which swished its way ponderously across the park and into the spinney, where it vanished, only to start a fresh conflagration among the dry pine trees which ignited and threw great flames and showers of sparks to heaven. In the alchemist’s room wonders had not ceased. Red, green and blue masses of fire, like Bengal lights, began to glow, violent explosions occurred as, one by one, the sealed bottles containing his essences and brews burst, and finally when all had died away, there rose a mighty, dreadful, unbearable heat and a glow like that of a thousand Roman candles. The light grew, seemed to penetrate to the very centre of the house, the floor crashed into the storey below, and the staircase collapsed just as Littlejohn and Cromwell with the firemen reached safety.
“What the ’ell was that?”
“That rocket thing looked like a buzz-bomb to me,” said P.C. Harkuss. “As fer the rest...It’s jest past me...”
Uncle Bernard wrung his hands and wept.
“All my apparatus gone...all my chemicals...my spagiric equipment...”
“Your wot?”
“The rocket...The thermite…”
“Thermite?” said Littlejohn.
“I had a large stock for use. I could not afford a furnace...I made diamonds, transmuted base metals into gold...I needed it to get the heat...Where shall I...?”
The police van had arrived and Littlejohn ordered the prisoner, Uncle Bernard and Nita to get in. Then, leaving the firemen to the burning shell of Beyle, he steered Cromwell to the little black police car and they followed the van to Tilsey.
Littlejohn and Cromwell laughed at each other in spite of their weariness as, in the wash-house at the police station, they stood, a couple of dirty dishevelled wrecks from their roof-climbing adventure.
“They were like a couple of cats,” said Littlejohn, vigorously towelling himself. “Before I got on the roof they were climbing about on the slates. Uncle Bernard was terrified to death. Alec must have tried to kill him...Well, let’s hear what they’ve got to say.”
Alec, Nita and Doane were waiting, grim and silent, in the office once occupied by Superintendent Simpole. Littlejohn had a strange feeling that something of the dead officer remained there. Simpole’s belongings were still in their old places and there was the shortened cord of the window, which had not yet been replaced, a grim souvenir of the Superintendent’s last act.
Alec and Doane were dirty still from their struggles. Nita, over whose shoulders Littlejohn had flung his overcoat in the grounds at Beyle, was still wearing it. All her clothes were lost in the fire, and someone had gone to try to find her a change from her night attire, her dressing-gown and her little red shoes.
“Well...?” said Littlejohn sitting at the desk.
“He tried to kill me. He shot at me with a revolver, but knowing him as a murderer, I took out the bullets and put in blanks this afternoon...”
Uncle Bernard couldn’t wait. He wanted Alec putting safely away.
“Why did he want to kill you...?”
Alec remained silent, glaring wildly at his uncle.
“He wanted money from me. He was fleeing from you.”
“Why? Why from us?”
“Excuse me, sir,” said P.C. Harkuss. “A young woman rung him up just before all this ’appened.”
“Maud, what’s her name...Hankey was it, Crake?”
No answer from Alec.
“He killed Kent...Nita knows that,” went on Doane eagerly.
Alec at last spoke.
“Liar! You know you killed him yourself. He did it. He wanted my mother’s money for himself.”
“What do you know about your mother’s money?” asked Littlejohn.
“He knows everything. He’s been through her papers.”
Uncle Bernard was almost dancing with eagerness to convince.
“I heard him telephoning to Trotman and Kent the day Kent died. Just as Maudie whoever-she-is said. Nita knows Alec came creeping home just before Kent was killed and he tried to frame it on Trotman, because he hated Trotman for being his father and making him illegitimate...For causing all his troubles and depriving him of Frankie...”
“Frankie!!”
Alec Crake uttered it in a long wail, like the cry of a wounded animal.
“Frankie...! Oh, curse them all. Curse my mother, Trotman...eternal damnation to them all…”
“You killed Kent?” asked Littlejohn.
It was Nita who answered.
“Yes, he did. I saw him cross the park, creeping on all fours, like an animal, so that he should not be seen. He went in by the back. I was lying resting on the couch in the morning-room. He thought there was nobody about. I wondered what he was doing, because from where I lay, looking out of the French window over the spinney, I could see he had a hat in his hand and he never wore a hat himself. Funny what one notices...”
“And then...?”
“Auntie Bee dropped Uncle Arthur at the gate and drove off. Uncle Arthur came in and...He mustn’t have given him a chance. He hit him...A little while before, I saw Mr. Trotman coming over the lawn...I daren’t even get up to see what was going on. I was terribly afraid...The house seemed full of evil. Just outside the door...evil going on...”
She began to weep hysterically at her own imaginings.
But Nita had not finished. She looked the same pathetic, childish figure she had seemed to the bobbies at Beyle. Her voice, clear and musical at the best of times, was now hoarse and ominous.
“I kept quiet...Then, I told Uncle Bernard. He said what had happened. He said how Alec had tried to rob me of all I had. How he hated my mother in his heart and would have killed her himself, in course of time, if she hadn’t died before...I still kept silent. He is still my brother...or rather part-brother. Uncle Bernard told me that, as well. But when he tried to kill Uncle Bernard to-night, I decided to tell what I knew. You are a murderer, Alec, a cold, heartless, dangerous, crazy murderer...I hope they put you away for life where you can do no more harm...”
“My little Nita...”
Uncle Bernard, apparently overcome by Nita’s devotion, was now approaching her in tears, wanting to embrace her.
“Get away! It wasn’t because I love you that I hated Alec’s trying to kill you. I almost wish he had done. It was because if he had killed you, I would have been the next. I am telling what I know for my own safety...”
She pointed an accusing finger at Uncle Bernard.
“You have caused all the unhappiness in our family. Whenever a spark of trouble appeared, you fanned it into flame. You came between my father and mother. You caused my father’s death if the truth were only known. All you wanted was Beyle to hide in. What you hid from I don’t know. But you spared nothing to get your way. I despise you. Alec ought to have killed you...”
“Have you all finished now?” asked Littlejohn patiently. “Better take Mr. Doane and give him a place to wash, and some tea. Miss Crake needs some clothes...She’ll get her death in those night things...Leave Mr. Alec...I want him...”
At length they were alone...Littlejohn, Cromwell and Alec.
“Well?” said Littlejohn.
“What do you expect me to say?”
“Nothing, if you don’t wish. I must put that formally...Alec Crake...Alexander Crake...I arrest you for the murder of Arthur Kent. You need not make a statement and I warn you that anything you may say...”
“Cut it out...You can’t pin this on me...It was Trotman...”
“...I warn you that anything you say will be taken down and may be used in evidence...” Littlejohn continued inexorably.
“Could I have a drink?” asked Alec.” I’ve nothing else to say.”
At the next magistrates’ court, Alec Crake was found guilty of wilful murder and committed to the assizes. There, too, he was found guilty
. During the strain of the trial he broke down completely.
When the clerk at length asked him if he had anything to say before sentence, Alec Crake addressed the judge.
“Of course I’m guilty...What’s all the fuss about?”
And he went on to denounce his mother, Trotman and many others, until they led him raving below. He was ordered to be detained during Her Majesty’s pleasure by the Home Office, and, whilst the inmate of an asylum for criminal lunatics, he confessed again and again, each time giving the same minute details, which tallied for the most part with those of Littlejohn’s report.
Before Littlejohn finally left Tilsey after winding up the case, he was surprised to receive a visit from Mrs. Trotman.
“I called to thank you for all you’ve done,” said that pleasant little woman.” But for your understanding and skill, I’m afraid things could have gone hard with my husband.”
“Someone else would have found it out, Mrs. Trotman. If your husband was innocent, no harm would have come to him.”
“You’re wrong. Had he been arrested, even to be proved innocent later, it would have killed him. It would have ruined him in Tilsey and, after all, Tilsey is his life.”
Littlejohn knew that. The regard and adulation of Tilsey folk was meat and drink to the vain, pompous lawyer.
“He is very grateful, I can assure you. He couldn’t come himself. So I just came...”
That was right, too. Trotman would never come and eat humble pie and express gratitude for his safe delivery from disgrace. He’d left it to his gallant little wife to do.” Since this thing was cleared up, my husband has been a new man. Beyle has worried him terribly for years. Kent’s disgrace and death and then...the finger of suspicion pointed at him...Now, as I say, he has taken a new lease of life. I wish you could see him now. He is being Father Christmas at a children’s party. The annual party for the poor. The Mayor usually takes it, but he’s ill with bronchitis. He specially asked my husband and to my surprise he accepted...”
Littlejohn smiled; not, as Mrs. Trotman thought, out of joy at Trotman’s conversion, but at the very idea of Mr. Scrooge Trotman suddenly becoming an elephantine Santa Claus for the youngsters.
“He is more like his old self again...”
Remembering Trotman and Dulcie Crake and all the havoc they had caused between them, Littlejohn hoped not!
Uncle Bernard was charged with unlawful vivisection again — a technical charge to hold him pending news from the Spanish police and further inquiries concerning his other mysterious carryings-on. He was granted bail and took rooms in an hotel with Nita, who was very troubled concerning his disposal.
Three days after the fire, P.C. Harkuss, patrolling the grounds of Beyle, stopped what he thought was a trespassing tramp. The man got violent and Harkuss had to use his truncheon. Later, at the police station, the vagrant turned out to be a sailor, a Spaniard, whose papers were in the name of Juan Casado. A tin box he carried contained over nine thousand pounds in notes.
Casado was unable to explain himself, but finally broke down under the ordeal of police questioning through the Spanish master at the local grammar school. He confessed that he had taken the money from the cellars of Beyle. He said it was his own money, stolen from him years before. It seemed he had been travelling between English and South American ports and every time he landed here, he had searched without success for the accomplice who had robbed him more than twenty years ago. Finally, he had seen Bernard Doane’s name in a national newspaper in a report on Dulcie Crake’s inquest. Casado could read a bit of English, he said, and soon found his way to Tilsey. He had been there three days and let his ship sail without him in his excitement.
As he spoke, the patrol sent to Beyle returned. They had found the body of Uncle Bernard buried in the ruins, with a sailor’s knife in his back. He must have been rescuing his money from its hiding-place in the house and had been followed and set upon by the man he dreaded most.
Casado, his life’s ambition to get even with Uncle Bernard fulfilled, seemed quite content, even when they hanged him.
Dulcie, Kent, Simpole, Alec, Uncle Bernard, Casado.
Nicholas Crake, a just man who loved his fellows, would have been dumbfounded by the overwhelming way in which the gods avenged him!
If you enjoyed Crime in Leper’s Hollow, you might be interested in Death Drops the Pilot, also by George Bellairs.
Extract from Death Drops the Pilot by George Bellairs
1 QUEER BEHAVIOUR OF THE FALBRIGHT JENNY
THE impatient clanging of a ship’s bell. Ten-thirty and the last ferry-boat was ready to leave Elmer’s Creek for Falbright just across the River Hore. If you knew the schedule of cross-river sailings, you could tell the time of day by the ferry bell, just as in the fields of France the peasants follow the passing hours by the tolling for the offices at the parish church.
A lovely autumn day had been followed by a pitch black night. The last thin suggestion of departed daylight lingered on the horizon to the west beyond the Farne Deep and the intermittent flashes of the Farne Light.
The Falbright Jenny stood moored at the end of the long stone jetty, two deck-lights fore and aft and a glow shining from her innards where the engineer was putting coal on the boiler fire. Shuffling, unsteady footsteps along the quay, and the last two passengers crossed the gangway. Two half-drunken seamen who had been spending the evening in the taproom of the Barlow Arms at the top of the jetty. The engineer closed the furnace door, emerged from his lair and, single-handed, hauled in the gangway. As he did so, the engine-room telegraph clanged for half-astern.
Time to shut up shop at Elmer’s Creek. The last boat cut the village off from the rest of the world altogether until six in the morning. Unless, of course, anyone wanted to walk along the river bank to the bridge at Chyle, five miles away. A few natives and one or two modest holidaymakers remained; the rest returned to Falbright, a mile across the river estuary.
The Falbright Jenny backed her way out of Elmer’s Creek. Her reversed engines towed her a little way upstream, then halted. After a momentary hush, the bell clanged for full-ahead and she took a straight course for the light on Falbright pier-head.
A small steamer, built like a river tugboat, which held about two hundred passengers at a pinch. She was old and the Falbright Borough Council talked of replacing her by a motor vessel, but every year convinced themselves that she was good for another twelve months. Old John Grebe, the captain, had been piloting her for thirty years. The handyman, Joe Webb, who ran the engines and fired the boilers, made-up the crew of one.
This night there were about forty people on board. Unusual for the time of year, with the holiday crowds gone home, but the Elmer’s Creek Methodists had been holding a Sale of Work and a contingent of Falbright Mothers’ Union had been over, headed by the parson, to help them.
The Rev. John Thomas Jingling, B.A., was filled with a vague melancholy as he watched the lights of Elmer’s Creek recede and those of the opposite bank approach. The beauty of the night moved him deeply. The glow in the sky which came from the large town of Falbright, the lamps on the promenade looking a bit forlorn now that, the season over, they had removed the festoons of coloured lights which joined them in summer. A cluster of lighted cottages round the jetty at Elmer’s Creek. The illuminated portholes of the mail-boat from Ireland, which had arrived earlier in the evening, tied up at Falbright pier. And the buoys which indicated the Hore channel, twinkling in and out almost as far out as the Farne lighthouse which flashed in the distance.
Sailing over the flood to the distant shore! Mr. Jingling made a mental note for next Sunday’s sermon and almost without knowing it started to hum a tune. A woman at his elbow took it up in song and soon the whole boatload, except the tipsy customers from the Barlow Arms, were chanting to the vibration of the ancient engines.
O Beulah Land, sweet Beulah Land,
As on thy highest mount I stand,
I look away across the sea,
&nbs
p; Where mansions are prepared for me,
And view the shining glory shore...
It was then that Mr. Jingling noticed that the Falbright Jenny was behaving queerly. She wasn’t heading for the shining glory shore at all, but out to sea in the direction of the Farne Light.
It was with difficulty that the parson refrained from crying out aloud. Instead, and still shouting his chorus, he peered ahead at the bridge, but seeing no sign of Old John there, made for the engine-room and staggered clumsily down the short iron staircase.
“We’re heading out to sea, Joe!”
Joe Webb was standing at the steam-valve, his short pipe held a foot away from his mouth, which was wide open.
“Where mansions are prepared for me...” he was yelling. He had a vague idea that a good hymn might counteract the unlucky presence of a sky pilot aboard.
“Wot?”
“We’re heading to sea.”
Joe shook his head contemptuously. He’d been on the Falbright Jenny for twenty years and she’d never tried those sort of tricks.
“You’re mistaken, Reverend. The skipper’s jest takin’ a wide sweep on account of the tide.”
“Come and see for yourself, then. Quickly...quickly...”
But it was too late. The Jenny had already run a course between two buoys in the twisting river channel and with a quick shudder plunged her nose into a bank of sand. And there she stuck, her engines going, her screw thrashing vainly, her passengers terrified. Joe Webb closed the steam valve and there was silence for a minute. Then pandemonium broke out.
The engineer ran on deck and met the rushing stream of panic-stricken members of the Mothers’ Union.
“Stop where you are...Jest where you are...You don’t want her to ‘eel over, do you? It’s all right, but stop where y’are.”
He wobbled across the deck as fast as his large bulk would permit and up the ladder to the bridge. There was nobody there.
“Where’s he gone?” Webb asked the binnacle light.
But there was no answer and Webb hadn’t time to wait, for those ashore at Falbright had seen everything and men with lights were crossing the sandbanks to the Jenny. It was quite safe at low tide. She was stuck on the Elmer’s Creek side, with a narrow stretch of deep channel between her and the rescuers, who eventually brought a motor launch to take the passengers off.
Crime In Leper's Hollow Page 26
