by Bruce, Leo
‘It has. You come a long way?’
‘London,’ said Beef.
‘Business?’
‘In a way.’
‘What line?’
‘I’m not a traveller,’ replied Beef. ‘Family business.’
It was clear that the man’s curiosity was aroused.
‘Pittenden family?’ he asked after a pause.
‘It was,’ said Beef. ‘Before your time, I expect.’
The man smiled at that.
‘Before my time, eh? Must be a hell of a long way back then. I was born here and so was my father and grandfather. Don’t know any further back than that.’
‘Ah,’ said Beef, and drank his beer, leaving the next attack to the stranger.
‘Were you born in Pittenden?’ the latter asked.
‘No. Londoner.’
‘Relations this way perhaps?’
‘Supposed to of. But I don’t rightly know the name. I’ve heard they’ve died out now.
Farmers,’ ‘Farmers, were they?’
‘That’s what I’ve heard. There was a woman of about my age was the daughter.’
Beef’s manner suggested that every scrap of information was being dragged from him against his will, and this simple strategy seemed to inspire the stranger into efforts of concentration and memory.
‘Know anything about them?’
‘This woman I was speaking of got married down here. Matter of about twenty years ago. Had a little girl, too. But the fellow was no good and left her.’
‘Twenty years ago?’
‘‘Bout that.’
‘I don’t know who that could have been.’
‘Farmers,’ prompted Beef. ‘Not so long after the last war.’
‘Only daughter, was she?’
‘Couldn’t say,’ said Beef, and appeared to have dismissed the matter from his mind as he rose to order three more drinks.
‘Funny I can’t think of that,’ said the stranger.
‘Thought it might be before your time,’ mumbled Beef almost rudely. Then he turned to me and began a ridiculous conversation about the oil-painting on the wall, a subject on which he is particularly ignorant.
Suddenly there was a cry from the other man.
‘I’ve got it,’ he said. ‘Old Will Thorogood’s daughter. Married a London chap who went off and left her.’
‘Thorogood, eh?’
‘Yes. Used to have Rossback Farm. She was his only daughter, too. This chap came down here travelling in patent medicines, I believe. I can’t remember his name. Fell in with old Thorogood’s daughter and married her a month later. Everyone was surprised at the time because she was no beauty and no longer a girl.’
‘What did she look like?’ asked Beef.
The other laughed.
‘More like a man than a woman, she was. Well, she’d worked on a farm since she was a kid. They say she could plough a field with anyone, but I don’t know if that’s true. I tell you what she was though – a wonderful housekeeper for the old man. Looked after him like a mother. That’s why the old fellow didn’t like it when she married this London chap.
‘But that didn’t last long. Soon as the baby was born he went off and left her, and she went back to her father. The old man wasn’t doing too well – it was a bad time for small farms – and he was glad to have her. Then a couple of years later he died and Rossback Farm had to be sold up. There wasn’t much left for this daughter we were speaking of and she went off into service somewhere and took the little girl with her. I never heard of her again.’
‘Who was her mother then?’ asked Beef idly.
‘Old Thorogood married one of the Plucks from Leckley way. But she died before all this happened.’
Neither of us turned a hair at the mention of the name for which we had been listening. I saw my little theory being confirmed at every step. After Shoulter had left her and her father had died she had chosen her mother’s maiden name under which to make a new start.
‘D’you happen to remember where they were married?’ persisted Beef. ‘I mean this London chap and Miss Thoro-good that was?’
‘Yes. Parish church. I remember the wedding. Well, there’s a good many that would. She looked a bit out of place in a wedding dress. Proper farm girl, she was.’
As artfully as Beef had turned the conversation in this direction he now diverted it to other matters. And a few minutes later we went through into a gloomy apartment which had ‘Commercial Room’ on the door and sat down to lunch.
‘Means another parson, after all,’ said Beef. ‘We shall have to go and look at the register.’
I sighed. But it was obvious within a few moments of meeting Prebendary Boxe, the Rector of Pittenden, that he was not going to provide me with a touch of minor characterization, comic or otherwise. He was a keen-faced businesslike man who asked what he could do for us in a tone that implied that whatever it was he had not time to do it. Beef haltingly asked if he might refer to the register, and almost before he had finished speaking the rector nodded.
‘My gardener will take you down. He’s my verger as well, and has the keys. You may make a small contribution to the Church Expenses Fund to repay his trouble. You’ll find the box in the south transept. Good afternoon.’
It took us half an hour to find what we wanted, for in the years following the last war the marriage and giving in marriage in Pittenden seemed to have been considerable. When at last we came on the entry we sought I could not repress a cry of triumph. For it was quite clear that the man who had married Hester Thorogood had been none other than Ronald Shoulter.
When he had returned the register to the locked cupboard the verger-gardener asked Beef whether the rector had told him to put a contribution in the Church Expenses box.
‘You can give it to me,’ he pointed out. ‘I’ll pop it in. Save you time.’
Beef complied and we left him to lock up.
As we returned to the station I informed Beef that this had been my theory from the first. I told him I had suspected the truth from the first minute that I had heard that Mrs Pluck had been deserted by her husband.
‘You don’t say?’ retorted Beef, with his heaviest sarcasm. I might have known that he would not like his own credit being shared.
He adopted a somewhat stern demeanour when, later that evening, we again called at Mr Chickle’s house to see Mrs Pluck. The old gentleman was still away, though he was expected to return on the following morning. Mrs Pluck grudgingly asked us in.
‘I been to Pittenden,’ announced Beef.
Still the woman tried to keep up her defensive shield of rudeness and indifference. Her face did not change at the mention of Pittenden.
‘I’m sure I don’t care where you’ve been,’ she said.
‘I’ve seen the register in the parish church.’
Now she was staring at him.
‘So you know?’ she gasped.
‘I know that Shoulter was your husband.’
Just as once before we had found that behind her surliness were floods of loquacity which once released were hard to check, so we found ourselves now listening to a long disjointed colloquy.
‘Well, it’s true. I did marry him. But I never had anything to do with his murder, though I wouldn’t have been sorry at that if you hadn’t started nosing round and finding out who he was. Now I suppose my daughter’ll get to hear of it and it’s a shame, because she’s no idea but what her father’s dead. He was always a dirty rotter and what I married him for I can’t think. It’s plain why he married me – because he thought it was a nice little farm property for him to come into and live comfortable. Then, when he found out that the place was mortgaged and my father in a bad way and the little girl born, he went off. They told me I ought to have gone after him for the separation and put his picture in the newspapers and that, to find out where he was, but I wouldn’t do that. Good riddance, I said, and knew I could manage as long as I didn’t see his wicked face again. And I might never have d
one if I hadn’t come to work here and heard the name Shoulter, and wondered if it was him. Then one day I ran into him in Barnford and he knew me at once, and after that there was no peace at all. He found out about Mabel getting married and everything, and started wanting money and saying if I didn’t give it him he’d go over and tell her who he was, and that would have upset everything. I gave him what I had, and of course he wanted more. That’s what I had to see Mabel about on Christmas Eve. I shall never forget young Ribbon coming in and saying he was lying dead up the footpath. I won’t say I was sorry because I wasn’t. It was a weight off my mind. And I’d never told anyone he was my husband and never thought you’d come along and find out and think I’d murdered him.’
‘If you didn’t,’ said Beef, ‘who did?’
‘That’s what I’ve been asking myself ever since I heard it was murder and not suicide. Well, I never thought it was suicide, really. He wasn’t the kind for that. Thought too much about himself.’
‘Do you think he was getting money from anyone else?’
‘I don’t see how he could have been, down here anyway. Unless his poor sister used to give him anything, which I doubt.’
‘Did he have anything to do with Mr. Chickle?’
‘So far as I know they never met.’
Beef seemed lost in thought. At last he spoke.
‘I can’t see why you don’t tell your daughter and son-in-law the whole thing,’ he said at last. ‘Nice young chap. He’d understand all right. And so would she.’
Mrs Pluck made no answer to that, but she did concede before we left her that she ‘supposed we had our job to do,’ and I had the impression that she was happier for having got the story of her marriage off her chest. But that, I reflected, did not make her innocent.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
The Inevitable Second Corpse
THERE followed a day of inactivity for me, during which Beef did what he called ‘studying his notes’. I have long since given up doing anything of the sort myself, for in reading other detective novels with the eye of an experienced chronicler I have come to the reluctant conclusion that lists of suspects, time-tables, elaborate catalogues of clues and so on are the resort of those who feel the need to fill another chapter when nothing in the way of true detection presents itself. Besides, I accept my task as that of relating the doings of Beef as faithfully as another author described ‘What Katy Did’, and I have decided not to vary from this rule. If my activities are of the least importance it may be said that I played a game of snooker at the Barnford Working Men’s Club and waited for the results of the no doubt monumental deliberations that were being done by Beef.
‘Solved it?’ I asked cheerfully that evening.
‘Not altogether. I can’t see any reasonable motive.’
When I know that he is indulging in mysteriousness I leave him severely alone.
‘Chickle came back to-day,’ he observed.
‘Indeed?’
‘Yes. On the same train as Shoulter took that day.’
‘Ah,’ I said, mimicking his favourite interjection.
‘We’ll go up and see him in the morning.’
‘Don’t you think he may get rather tired of your visits?
‘I hope so,’ said Beef enigmatically.
But we were destined to see Chickle before the morning, and in circumstances which, even to me, with my long experience of the unexpected, were astonishing.
At about ten to ten that evening, when I was rather unwillingly taking down the scores for a game of darts which Beef was playing in the public bar, Mr Bristling came in and whispered to me that Mrs Pluck was in the bottle and jug and wanted to see Beef most particular. As soon as he had thrown the double-eighteen which he needed for a finish, Beef accompanied me and we interviewed the housekeeper in the little back room where Joe Bridge had told us his story. It was plain at once that she was in a state of great trepidation.
‘Whatever’s the matter?’ asked Beef, to whom the visit was unwelcome, coming as it did so close to closing time.
‘It’s Mr Chickle,’ she blurted out. ‘He came home this afternoon looking ever so ill and funny. He didn’t hardly speak to me and didn’t eat a bite with his tea. Then as soon as it was dark he got on his coat and hat and said, “Mrs Pluck, I’m going to call on Mr Flipp, you understand. If anyone should want to know where I’ve gone you tell them I’ve gone to call on Mr Flipp. Don’t forget that, please.” And he marched off and hasn’t come home since. It’s the best part of five hours he’s been gone and I’m worried sick, what with that murder in the wood and everything.’
‘Did he take his gun?’ asked Beef.
‘His gun? Certainly not. Whatever for? It was dark when he started out.’
‘Well, there’s only one thing for it. We must go and report to Inspector Chatto and see what he says. I shouldn’t be surprised but what he decides to go up to Mr Flipp’s home. Come on.’
Neither Inspector Chatto nor Constable Watts-Dunton seemed very pleased to see us, but when he had heard Mrs Pluck’s story the inspector decided, as Beef had anticipated, to go at once to ‘Woodlands’. We waited only while the two policemen hastily pulled on greatcoats and then the four of us set out, while Mrs Pluck went to the home of her friend Mrs Wilks, saying that nothing would persuade her to go up to ‘Labour’s End’ again that night.
I shall not easily forget that long walk through the dark and cold of a windy January night. The two policemen were ahead, talking a little between themselves, but saying nothing to us, whose presence was made to seem on sufferance. Beef was silent, too, and I was glad to be left to my own thoughts, which were by no means calm. In spite of all Beef’s investigation of Mrs Pluck, the case seemed to centre round the two contrasting men whom we should find at ‘Woodlands’: the big bluff Flipp and little talkative Chickle. I formed no definite idea of what I thought had happened, but I agreed with the serious view taken by the police of Chickle’s failure to return after so long an interval.
As we tramped along with the wind in our faces a figure loomed up in the road ahead, and Inspector Chatto threw the light of his torch on the approaching man. It was Joe Bridge.
‘Where are you coming from?’ asked Chatto.
‘My home. Going down to Barnford.’
‘Have you met anyone on the way?’
‘Not a soul.’
I knew this was not Bridge’s quickest route, but I said nothing. Again we were trudging on. For a few minutes there was a half-break in the clouds and a dull moon shone, but soon it was dark again. At last we reached the end of the long drive which went up through the wood to Flipp’s lonely house, and turned in. We were sheltered from the wind now and, except for the rattle of the bare boughs overhead, the night was quieter.
When ‘Woodlands’ came in sight Chatto stopped, and the four of us stared into the semi-darkness.
‘Not a light in the place,’ said Chatto.
‘May have gone to bed. It’s nearly eleven now.’
‘Then we must wake ‘em up. Come on.’
We walked slowly up to the front door, peering about us as though we expected some movement in the night. The windows were like squares of wet ink, dark and shining.
Not a dog barked.
Then we had a surprise. The front door was wide open and we could catch a glimpse of a dark hall beyond. We stood listening for a few minutes, but there was not a sound of movement.
‘Anyone at home?’ called Chatto. Then louder, ‘Anyone at home?’
I had an eerie feeling that someone in the dark house was listening and waiting – perhaps crouching in fear or standing behind the locked door of a bedroom.
‘Where’s the switch?’ asked Chatto.
‘There’s no electric light,’ Watts-Dunton told him.
Chatto’s torch played over the hall. What we saw was commonplace enough – a hall table, coats hanging, a few umbrellas. Nothing seemed out of place. Chatto crossed to a door on the left and, flinging it open, again
let his torch play over the interior. It was a small dining-room, I judged; and lying on a mat before the last red cinders of a fire was the body of a man.
‘My God!’ I whispered to Beef. ‘That looks like Flipp!’
It was Flipp. He was prone on his stomach with his face buried in his arms, fully dressed. Chatto stooped over him.
‘Is he dead?’ I asked.
‘Dead drunk,’ was the curt reply, after the inspector had made a brief examination. ‘Can’t you smell it?’
There was, indeed, a stench of stale alcohol in the air.
Watts-Dunton struck a match and set it to the table lamp. A yellow light, inadequate though it was, made the figure on the floor discernible in greater detail. Chatto had turned him over now and I could see the almost purple face of the police suspect.
Without ceremony Chatto emptied a carafe of water over the man’s head, and Flipp stirred, at first uneasily and then with a sudden jerk.
‘What the hell…’
But before he could form his question Chatto snapped. ‘Where’s your wife?’
‘Gone,’ said Flipp, and fell back again.
‘And the servants?’
‘Gone. Everyone gone. Left me alone. Who the hell are you?’
‘Police,’ said Chatto.
This time Flipp sat up and attempted unsuccessfully to rise to his feet.
‘What do you want?’ he asked.
‘I’m looking for Mr Chickle.’
Flipp seemed to lose interest. He said: ‘Oh,’ and closed his eyes.
‘When did you see him last?’
‘Who? Chickle? Days ago.’
‘You haven’t seen him to-day?’
‘To-day? No. Haven’t been out all day. Everyone gone and left me. No food – nothing. Wife deserted me. Servants flown. Now I want to sleep.’
Chatto shook him.
‘We know positively that Mr. Chickle came to see you this evening.’
‘Positively didn’t.’
‘He set off from his home with the object of seeing you.’
‘Never – well – came here, I tell you. I know Chickle. If he’d come here I’d have seen him.’
‘What time did you start drinking?’
