Fear on the Phantom Special

by Edward Marston

  ‘If you always go at that pace,’ said Colbeck, ‘you must have needed horseshoes on a regular basis. That means you’d have seen a lot of Gregor Hayes.’

  ‘I told you before. He was a friend.’

  ‘Why did he go to Hither Wood in the first place?’

  ‘It was because of a wager. Long before he disappeared there, there’d always been stories about the wood. Witches, demons, monsters – they’d all been reported at Hallowe’en. Few people dared to go there on that night.’

  ‘The blacksmith did.’

  ‘Gregor was never one to shirk a challenge. Besides,’ said Ainsley, ‘there was a lot of money involved. He accepted the wager and went off to Hither Wood at Hallowe’en.’

  ‘How could you be sure that he stuck to the terms of the wager? If he was on his own, nobody would have seen him enter the wood. Other people would’ve been too frightened to follow him in order to verify that he was obeying the rules.’

  ‘Gregor Hayes was a man you could trust.’

  ‘So you let him go off on his own?’

  ‘That’s what most of us were happy for him to do,’ said Ainsley, ‘but we had to satisfy the doubters. Gregor agreed. He insisted that we had observers. I was one of them and I put my men at strategic points around the wood. There’s no way he could have sneaked out without one of us spotting him.’

  ‘What, even in the dark?’

  ‘We all had lanterns.’

  ‘Were you armed?’

  ‘Some of us had shotguns.’

  ‘Why was that?’

  ‘Three or four of my men were very superstitious,’ said Ainsley. ‘They thought there really were evil spirits in the wood. I refused to believe it. That’s why I bet on Gregor to walk out of there unharmed.’

  ‘But he didn’t walk out at all.’

  ‘No, he didn’t. To win the wager, he had to stay in there alone for two hours. After two and a half, there was still no sign of him and we started to get worried. I ordered my men to search for him and we went into the wood.’

  ‘Even with lanterns, you couldn’t have seen all that well in the dark. How long were you in there?’

  ‘Well past dawn,’ replied Ainsley, ‘and by that time, a lot of other people had joined us. There were dozens of us combing our way through Hither Wood. Gregor had definitely been there because items of his clothing were found, but there was no trace of him.’

  ‘Did he have a family?’

  ‘Yes – he had a wife, three children and one grandchild.’

  ‘Who broke the news to them?’

  ‘I did,’ said Ainsley, clearly moved, ‘and it was the most difficult thing I’ve ever done in my life. I felt so guilty at urging him to accept the wager. It’s the reason I’ve put my heart and soul into searching for him. The family is owed that.’

  He used the whip to get more speed out of the horse.

  Andrews was too upset to make sense. Madeleine helped her father into the drawing room and made him sit down, urging him to get his breath back before continuing. Lydia and Hinton were sympathetic onlookers. When he felt ready to go on, the old man tried to speak more slowly and clearly. He obviously felt that he was reporting a major crime. At the end of his recital, Madeleine held his hand.

  ‘Are you quite sure it isn’t in the house?’ she asked.

  ‘I told you, Maddy. I searched high and low.’

  ‘Your eyes are not what they were, Father.’

  ‘I know you think that I put it somewhere then forgot where it was,’ he said, ‘and I believed that myself for a time. I was wrong. Somebody got into my house and stole that medal.’ He rounded on Hinton. ‘Thank heaven you’re here! You must take this case on at once. You’ve no idea how important that award is to me. It’s one of the most valuable things I have.’

  ‘I appreciate that, Mr Andrews,’ said Hinton, ‘but I have to have a case assigned to me by the superintendent. I can’t just pick and choose what crimes to investigate.’

  ‘Don’t you understand how much this means to me? Ideally, I’d like my son-in-law in charge, but he’s not even in London at the moment. That’s why I’m appealing to you.’

  ‘Alan is right,’ said Madeleine. ‘In any case, I’m not entirely certain that the medal was stolen. I’d need to search the house myself.’

  ‘It does seem odd that a thief would take that one item and nothing else,’ Lydia remarked. ‘What do you think, Alan?’

  ‘That’s a point worth making. Thieves usually take whatever they can sell for money. Why leave everything else untouched? It doesn’t make sense.’

  ‘Report it to Scotland Yard,’ demanded the old man.

  ‘No,’ said Madeleine, firmly, ‘I have to go through the house myself first. It’s full of nooks and crannies. I’m fairly certain that I’ll find it.’

  ‘It’s not there, Maddy,’ howled her father, stamping his foot. ‘I just know it.’

  ‘Then let me suggest this,’ said Hinton, intervening gently. ‘If your daughter’s search is fruitless, I’ll look into the case unofficially, so to speak.’

  ‘That means working in your own time,’ said Lydia.

  He looked at her. ‘I’ve done that before, remember.’

  ‘You certainly have – I was the beneficiary.’

  ‘I’d just like some action,’ insisted Andrews. ‘I don’t feel safe in my house any more. It’s a horrible feeling.’

  ‘You can always stay here, Father,’ said Madeleine. ‘For the moment, we must let Alan go and hope that we don’t have to take advantage of his kind offer. While you stay here with Lydia, I’ll take a cab to the house and go through every inch of it. Meanwhile,’ she continued, helping him to his feet, ‘you can go upstairs to the nursery to see your granddaughter. Helen will soon cheer you up.’

  When they got to the place where the fire had been seen on the line, Ainsley brought the horse to a halt. He and Colbeck got out of the trap. They were in an isolated spot with hills rising on one side and a veritable forest on the other. Anyone wishing to disappear quickly in the darkness had a choice of routes. Charred branches had been moved off the line and left some yards away. Colbeck knelt down to examine them, removing a glove to pick up some of the ash and hold it to his nose. Ainsley looked on in silence.

  ‘Where was the train?’ asked Colbeck, getting up.

  ‘Fifty yards or more in that direction,’ said the other, pointing towards Kendal. ‘The driver was taking no chances. He stopped well clear of the fire.’

  ‘So Mr Piper sprinted all the way here, did he?’

  ‘That’s what witnesses told us.’

  ‘It’s confirmed by what Mr Hedley said.’ He turned to his companion. ‘I wonder if I might ask you a favour?’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Hold my hat and coat.’

  ‘But it’s cold out here, Inspector.’

  ‘I daresay I’ll soon warm up.’

  Taking off his hat and coat, he handed them to Ainsley and jogged the best part of sixty yards up the track, moving easily with long, fluent strides. To the sergeant’s amazement, Colbeck turned around, bent down as if about to start a race then set off. Quickly gathering speed, he ran at full pelt towards him. When he got to the point where the fire had been raging, he carried on before gradually slowing down to a halt. After looking around carefully in every direction for a while, Colbeck walked back up the track. Ainsley was surprised that he wasn’t breathing heavily after his exertions. When Colbeck reached him, the sergeant handed over his coat.

  ‘What the devil were you doing?’ he asked.

  ‘I was conducting an experiment.’

  CHAPTER TEN

  Victor Leeming found the bookshop both intriguing and restful. He felt so relaxed that he had to remind himself that he was there in connection with an unexplained disappearance. As they chatted, Tiller pottered about, writing the titles of new books in his ledger before putting them onto the relevant shelves.

  ‘It may look like chaos in here,’ he said,
cheerfully, ‘but I do have a system. If any customer wants a book on a particular subject, I can put my hand on it at once.’

  ‘What about prices?’

  ‘Oh, I never write those on any second-hand books. I work out what someone can afford to pay and decide that way. If a customer like Geoffrey Hedley came in here, I’d tend to move the price up, whereas I’d make allowances for someone with more limited resources.’

  ‘What sort of price would I have to pay?’

  ‘A fair one.’

  ‘I won’t put you to the test. On my wage, I can’t spend money on books. I’ve got a family to feed.’

  ‘They must come first.’ Tiller looked him up and down, then lowered his voice. ‘Why don’t you be honest about it, Sergeant?’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘We both know what brought you here.’

  ‘I thought you’d be a useful person to talk to, that’s all.’

  ‘You were sent here,’ said the other, flatly. ‘Someone gave you my name, didn’t they? I was picked out because … well, Alex Piper and I were not exactly friends.’

  ‘That’s the first I’ve heard of it.’

  ‘Then perhaps you should know the details. As you can see,’ said Tiller, indicating the shop with a wave of his hand, ‘I don’t ask much from life. This is enough for me – this and the freedom to write my poetry.’

  ‘It obviously means a lot to you, Norm.’

  ‘It means everything.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Leeming, ‘I think I know what you’re going to tell me. This is to do with Miss Haslam, isn’t it?’

  ‘In one sense, I suppose that it is, but I don’t blame her.’

  ‘What happened, Norm?’

  ‘I’m not the only poet in this town, you see. There’s a handful of us and we get together now and then to read our latest work to each other. We hire a room at the King’s Arms,’ said Tiller. ‘It’s nice and private. We enjoy our evenings there. At least, we did until a recent meeting.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘Things were getting a little rowdy in the bar. We could hear voices raised and drunken laughter. Someone then barged into our room.’

  ‘I think I can guess who it was.’

  ‘Alex Piper.’

  ‘What state was he in?’

  ‘He was swaying all over the place.’

  ‘Couldn’t you just ask him to leave?’

  ‘I did but he was determined to say his piece first. Miss Haslam had obviously shown him that anthology I sold her, because he was holding it aloft in mockery. Then,’ said Tiller, teeth clenched, ‘he had the gall to read from the book. It was a tender love poem and he ridiculed it.’

  ‘Didn’t someone try to stop him?’

  ‘Hedley did his best to drag him away, but he was shrugged off. Piper wanted to humiliate me and he succeeded.’

  ‘That must have upset you.’

  ‘It was agonising.’

  ‘How did you feel?’

  For a split second, Tiller’s eyes blazed. ‘I felt as if I could kill him,’ he snarled. He held up both hands in apology. ‘That was wrong of me, I know, but my poems are more precious to me than anything I own. To have one of them derided in front of my friends was unbearable.’

  ‘Did you tell Miss Haslam what happened?’

  ‘I couldn’t.’

  ‘She was engaged to marry that man. I think she has the right to know what sort of person he really was.’

  ‘It was not my place to shatter her dreams.’

  ‘I wonder why Mr Hedley made no mention of this.’

  ‘Like me,’ said Tiller with a shrug, ‘he probably thinks it best forgotten.’

  ‘But you haven’t forgotten it, have you?’

  The reply came in the form of a low animal growl.

  ‘No, Sergeant. I haven’t.’

  Before she went to the house, Madeleine called at the home of the person who came in to clean her father’s house and do anything else that was needful. Feeling that she was under suspicion, Rene Garrity, a motherly, middle-aged woman, pointed out that she had no key to the cupboard where the medal was kept and no desire to own such a thing. When Madeleine had soothed her ruffled feathers, the cleaner said that Andrews was always forgetting things or putting them back in the wrong places.

  It was a salutary warning. Madeleine went straight on to her father’s house and let herself in with the key. She found several items that needed to be restored to their original places. Evidently, her father was more forgetful than she’d realised. After taking a deep breath, she began her search.

  Though it was not large, Hither Wood was dense. Trees were closely packed together, and undergrowth filled the remaining few gaps. It was difficult to walk along any of its narrow paths without making contact with trailing branches or spiky shrubs. Light was also restricted by the canopy. As Colbeck followed his guide, he could see the problems posed by the wood. Reaching the middle, they were suddenly in an open area of tufted grass. They stopped to survey it.

  ‘This is where it happened,’ said Ainsley. ‘Gregor had brought a couple of blankets to keep himself warm.’

  ‘Were they still here?’

  ‘Yes, and so were the clothes he’d taken off.’

  ‘Why should he do that in cold weather?’

  ‘I don’t know, Inspector.’

  ‘Isn’t it more likely that someone else took them off him?’

  ‘But there was nobody else here,’ argued Ainsley. ‘As I told you, we looked everywhere.’

  ‘How many trees did you climb?’

  ‘Well …’

  ‘None at all, I’ll warrant. Somebody high up in those branches would be invisible in the day, not to mention the night. You only looked down here, didn’t you?’

  ‘Yes, but we covered every inch.’

  ‘You might have been looking in the wrong direction.’

  ‘I don’t agree,’ said Ainsley, smarting at the rebuke. ‘Even if someone was out of sight up there, that doesn’t explain what happened to Gregor. If he’d been killed, we’d have seen the body down here on the ground.’

  ‘Not if he was hidden away,’ said Colbeck, looking upward. ‘Even a heavy man, as I presume the blacksmith was, could be hauled up into a tree by a stout rope. There might, of course, have been two assassins. That would have made the task much easier. And bear in mind that time was on their side.’

  ‘Was it?’

  ‘To win the bet, Mr Hayes had to stay here on his own for two hours. That gave the attackers ample time to murder, truss him up and conceal the body high among the foliage.’

  Ainsley removed his hat to look upwards. Loath to accept Colbeck’s theory, he offered one of his own, suggesting that a lone killer had been to the wood in advance to prepare a hiding place for himself and his victim.

  ‘Days later,’ he confided, ‘we did find a trench dug out and cleverly covered. I think that’s where Gregor must have been concealed.’

  ‘It’s not impossible,’ said Colbeck. ‘At least we agree on the involvement of a human agency. Did you have any suspects?’

  ‘Not really,’ admitted the other. ‘Gregor was a popular man. Everyone liked him. That led me to believe that it might be the work of a tramp sleeping here in Hither Wood. Some of these vagrants can be vicious. He might have killed Gregor to steal any money he had.’

  ‘If he was a vagrant, he’s more likely to have stolen his clothes and blankets. They’d be more use to him than money. What could he spend it on out here? Were there any reports of itinerants in this area at the time?’

  ‘There were, actually.’

  ‘Did you try to round them up?’

  ‘Of course we did. We found three in all and I put the fear of death into each one of them. But, under questioning, they were obviously innocent, so we had to let them go.’

  ‘You should have been looking nearer home.’

  Ainsley bristled. ‘Don’t tell me my job, Inspector.’

  ‘It’
s just a friendly observation,’ said Colbeck. ‘I accept that the blacksmith was well liked but his very popularity might have been a source of bitterness for someone.’

  ‘I don’t believe that.’

  ‘Will you accept that it had to be someone who knew about that wager? In other words, they had time to get here in advance and lay in ambush.’

  ‘There were between twenty or thirty of us in all. I spoke to each and every one who’d placed a bet. None of them could possibly have sneaked off here that night,’ stressed Ainsley. ‘Their wives and families would have noticed them missing. Ten years of searching has taught me one thing, Inspector. The killer didn’t come from Kendal.’

  ‘Perhaps not,’ said Colbeck, ‘but the money needed to retain his services might well have done. Hired killers tend to be expensive. We should be looking for someone with money.’

  Madeleine’s search was handicapped by nostalgia. Instead of being able to work her way through the house, she kept stumbling on items that revived fond memories. There were wooden toys that her father had carved for her and a shawl that had once belonged to her mother. Most evocative of all were the letters she found in a box in the front bedroom. They’d been written to her father before the couple had married and they brought tears to her eyes.

  Vowing not to be distracted again, she pressed on with renewed determination. Madeleine was more painstaking than her father had been, looking under rugs and behind curtains, going carefully through her mother’s sewing bag, checking the pockets in all of her father’s clothing and even climbing on a chair to look at the top of cupboards. Because she knew that he had fits of absent-mindedness, she found herself taking every item of china and cutlery out of their respective places so that she could look behind them.

  It was all to no avail. She had to admit defeat.