‘Meaning that there might be giveaway traces of some sort in the old one?’
‘Just that. Of course he could quite well have found the chap hanging around the farm and beaten him up a bit too hard, in which case we’re wasting time over this car business.’
Crookshank agreed that there was no harm in having a go, but added that he’d be staggered if anything came out of it.
‘You can take it as a dead cert that Grant deals with Mayfield’s Garage in West Street. It’s far and away the best in the whole of this area, and the biggest, too. Ted Callington’s the sales manager. He’s got the gift of the gab good and proper which ought to help if you can get the chance to pump him. West Street’s off High Street, the turning on the right just after Marks and Spencer. Meantime we’ll be getting on to the motor licensing department at County Hall, and the firm that did that aerial survey.’
Pollard thanked him, and went off to compile his interim report for the Assistant Commissioner. Toye went out to the car park and sat for some minutes in the driving seat of the Rover, deep in thought. He enjoyed a chance of acting independently but preferred to have a definite plan of campaign before going ahead. Finally he switched on the engine and started off. Five minutes later he drove into the forecourt of Mayfield Garage Limited, noting the gleaming models on display in the show windows and the general air of prosperity. As he entered the spacious interior a number of heads turned, and he realised at once that the Rover had been identified. An obvious foreman detached himself from a trio working on an Austin Cambridge and hurried forward, wiping his hands on a rag. Simultaneously a well-groomed man in his forties with crisp fair hair and an easy manner emerged from a glass-fronted office, and arrived alongside as the car came to a halt.
‘The Yard Rover, by Jove!’ he exclaimed. ‘Lovely job, isn’t she? What’s the trouble? We’re honoured, aren’t we, George? I’m Callington, sales manager here.’
Toye got out, introduced himself, and embarked on a description of a slight smell which had led him to suspect a possible leak from the automatic choke. He had tightened a screw, but felt it was advisable to get an expert to have a look.
‘Run ’er over into that bay, sir,’ the foreman said, ‘and we’ll do a check right away.’
Toye complied. As he got out of the car again the foreman vanished under the bonnet and became incommunicado. Finding the sales manager at his elbow Toye had no difficulty in getting a conversation going. A favourable comment on the garage’s layout and equipment launched Ted Callington on an account of the ever-increasing volume of business handled by the Mayfield, in spite of dicey deliveries of new cars and the difficulties of getting skilled mechanics.
‘Everybody’s saying money’s tight,’ he said, ‘but round here people are buying cars all right.’
‘Not only in the lower price range from what’s on the road,’ Toye commented. ‘I’ve seen a BMW I could do with. Red. Looks a treat.’
‘That’ll be Mr Grant’s,’ Ted Callington replied enthusiastically. ‘Sold it to him last year, as soon as we’d got it into the window. First delivery after the Easter holiday, on the Wednesday it was. The boss wondered if we’d get stuck with her, seeing she was a bit pricey, but I said let’s take delivery now for God’s sake as we’ve got the chance. It boosts a garage to have cars in that class on show.’
‘Mr Grant must be a warm bloke,’ Toye observed with a suitable note of envy. ‘Successful businessman, I suppose?’
‘He’s quite a youngster, actually. Young architect in a local firm. His aunt put up the money — most of it, anyway. He traded in his Morris Marina. She was Miss Grant of Upway Manor, and what you call a local figure. She left over £100,000: fell off a ladder and broke her neck a month after buying her nevvy the BMW.’
‘I could do with the sort of aunt who’d buy me a BMW out of a display window as though it was a push bike.’
‘Couldn’t we all? She’d promised him a new car for his birthday and told him to look round for something he liked. He’d been havering a bit and didn’t seem able to make up his mind, but the minute he set eyes on the BMW he went for it flat out. It was partly she was bucked at his being made a partner in his firm so soon, he told me, that she agreed to cough up for it.’
At this point Toye was requested to rev up the engine and the conversation was broken off. He engaged in a reassuring discussion with the foreman, George Fry, who had further tightened a screw, and finally managed to extricate himself, feeling that he had contrived to learn all that Ted Callington could usefully tell him.
Back at the police station he found Pollard reading over his report on the case for the Assistant Commissioner with a dubious expression.
‘I only hope this’ll keep the boss quiet pro tern,’ he said, putting it down. ‘Well? Had any luck?’
‘It went my way all right,’ Toye told him. ‘Callington came breezing up the minute I drove into the place, and you didn’t need to try to get him talking. I said something about noticing Grant’s BMW, and he was off. He said Grant bought it the day they put it in the show window, the Wednesday after Easter, trading in a Morris Marina, and his aunt footing the rest of the bill. But Grant had been thinking of getting a new car for some time, Callington said...’
‘Interesting but inconclusive,’ Pollard commented when Toye’s narrative came to an end. ‘Can’t you see Counsel for the Prosecution and Counsel for the Defence both turning it to account in court? I wonder what the chances are of getting hold of Grant this evening?’
The sudden appearance of Superintendent Crookshank put an end to the discussion.
‘We’ve had a bit of luck which’ll save time,’ he announced. ‘Inspector Hemsworthy remembered that he’d seen those aerial photographs you were talking about, Mr Pollard, pinned up round one of the rooms at the Museum. The company that took ’em presented a set. The Museum’s just for stuff of local interest, and it’s run by volunteers mostly. Miss Grant who was taking that walk you met up with happened to be on duty, and seeing she was there when the skeleton was found, she understood the section you’d be wanting.’
He handed Pollard a cardboard tube. It contained a section of a photograph about four feet long and a foot wide. Toye cleared the table, and they spread out the photograph and weighted down its two ends. As Pollard had expected, it had been taken from a low altitude and showed the area in remarkably clear detail. He looked down at it, momentarily fascinated by this godlike view of a landscape through which he had progressed slowly and insignificantly at ground level, with not much more perception than an insect’s of his surroundings as a whole. There were the buildings of Starbarrow Farm, the original long house and the subsequent additions. There, too, tiny but distinct, was the kistvaen, where his involvement in this deeply puzzling case had begun so unexpectedly... He surfaced abruptly as a constable brought in a powerful electric lamp and proceeded to plug it into a socket. As Toye returned to the table with a lens, Superintendent Crookshank, who had been poring over the photograph, suddenly jabbed at it with his forefinger.
‘Looks to me that something’s sticking out behind a sort of thicket just here,’ he said.
‘You’re dead right,’ Pollard agreed a minute later after a scrutiny with the lens. ‘It’s not a building though. It’s a flat surface with biggish stones on it. What’s the betting that it’s a well-head? Must be a disused well.’
After another inspection Crookshank became almost animated.
‘That’ll be it,’ he said. ‘When they sank a shaft for the one the Lings use now, they’ll have chucked a lot of rock and stuff down the old one to fill it up. Then last year somebody bunged your chap in and put the top on again. It looks like a great flat bit of wood or metal to me. If you find the missing bones belonging to the skeleton down there, you’re home and dry.’
‘Not quite home,’ Pollard replied. ‘Remember Ding, dong, bell? The lad who chucked poor pussy in wasn’t the one that yanked her out again, was he? Look here, we want to be absolutely sure of
our facts before we weigh in with a search warrant. Who owned Starbarrow Farm before the Lings?’
Crookshank scowled as he struggled in vain to remember.
‘Blessed if I can call the bloke’s name to mind,’ he said. ‘The agents were North and Searle, though. I know Bob Searle, and he used to say it looked as if they’d got it round their necks for keeps. It stood empty for four or five years. I’ll give him a ring at his place. The office’ll be shut by now. Do you want that lamp anymore? All right, Jones. Bring it along.’
In his absence Toye expressed admiration.
‘Spot on, that air photograph, sir.’
‘A bit late in the day,’ Pollard replied. ‘If I’d only thought of it before, we’d have saved valuable time. The real luck was that Aunt Is happened to mention it. But we’re not going to stick out our necks until we’ve got this well-head affair identified, all the same.’
Superintendent Crookshank returned well-primed with information. The vendor of Starbarrow Farm had been a Mr Danby Blake, a so-called gentleman farmer who had lost a packet over it and been obliged to sell up in 1965. He had come in from up the country somewhere, quite sure that with modern methods he could make a success of Starbarrow, whatever the local farmers said. He tried a lot of ambitious schemes and came to grief as everybody said he would. He was now working for a salary on Lord Landgrove’s home farm at Deepacres Park, near Winnage.
‘I think we’ll pop over and call on him presently,’ Pollard said. ‘I expect he had big ideas about the water supply, among other things. See if he’s on the phone, Toye. Super, we’re grateful to you for all this help, you know.’ Crookshank expressed gratification in a characteristically offhand manner, and took his departure as Toye handed the telephone receiver to Pollard. Mr Danby Blake sounded mystified, but was ready to give any information he could about Starbarrow Farm.
‘Not that I ever want to hear the bloody place mentioned again,’ he added, ‘seeing that I all but went bust over it. But come along by all means and have a drink tonight. We’re the first house on the right, about five hundred yards beyond the Deepacres main gates if you’re coming towards Winnage.’
After writing up their notes on the day’s developments they went back to their hotel, where Pollard rang Jane. Against a distant background of small piping voices they talked in their usual motoring code about his activities, and he told her of the confusing network of local byways in the area.
‘Aunt Is sent love and everything to you and the brats,’ he told her, after describing the snack lunch at the cottage. ‘How are they?’
‘Fighting fit. Like a word with them?’
He gathered that the in-thing was now practising for the school sports, but the garden was a bit small for it. When he came home would he take them up to the Common? He promised, had a final word with Jane, and rang off. At least the generation gap wasn’t making itself felt yet, he reflected, heading for the hotel dining room.
Danby Blake, fortyish and suntanned, received Pollard and Toye hospitably, introduced his wife, and offered drinks. They both appeared philosophical about their changed fortunes.
‘I can’t say we’re wildly thrilled at living in a three-bedroomed house bang on the road,’ he said, indicating his surroundings with a sweeping gesture. ‘All the same, there’s a lot to be said for a definite job with fixed hours and a regular monthly cheque. Not to mention letting someone else do all the worrying. And Lord Landgrove’s jolly decent to us, isn’t he, Nan?’
Mrs Blake, an outdoor type of about her husband’s age, agreed.
‘Starbarrow was super,’ she said. ‘Living out there was heaven in some ways. You felt as if you owned the earth. But Dan’s had marvellous luck to land this job. And I don’t mind admitting that the house was hell to run! We couldn’t afford to modernise it properly, and any help just wasn’t on, of course. I don’t know myself with all the mod cons here. I must push off now if you’ll excuse me: cakemaking for the village fete tomorrow.’
‘Well,’ Danby Blake said, when Toye had closed the door behind her and returned to his chair, ‘it’s this skeleton stunt, I suppose? Ling’s three-quarters of the way round the bend, of course, but I shouldn’t have thought he’d actually murder anybody. What can I tell you about the place?’
‘What’s the water supply like?’ Pollard asked.
Danby Blake grimaced.
‘That’s a sore spot. It was water supply that bowled us out in the end. We bought the place in ’58, having been assured that the house well and the small stream through the fields on the south side never ran dry. In the summer of ’59 they both did, and I had to spend the earth on deepening the house well and putting storage tanks into the fields. After that we got on a bit better, and I planned to clear and improve the newtake — that’s the enclosed area behind the house. I called in water engineers about deepening the old well, and they said it was a near cert, but after they’d put down a twelve foot trial bore without hitting a decent inflow of water, funds ran out, and I had to call it off. I —’
‘What did you do about this old well? Wasn’t it a possible danger to straying stock?’
‘I had all the stuff chucked back and the timber they’d used, and whatever, and we put a dirty great sheet of iron over the hole and weighted it down with chunks of rock.’ Danby Blake broke off and eyed Pollard suspiciously. ‘Look here, if Ling’s been fool enough to shift the cover and somebody fell in, it’s his responsibility, not mine. Anyway, the shaft was filled up almost to the top. You couldn’t have killed yourself, even if you did fall in.’
‘Thank you,’ Pollard said, ‘that’s very helpful information. Would it have been possible for a chap on his own to shift the chunks of rock and the sheet iron?’
Danby Blake’s eyes widened.
‘If he was a reasonably hefty bloke, yes,’ he replied after a moment’s consideration. ‘Of course it would have sunk into the ground a bit after all this time, and got partly overgrown round the edges, I should think.’
‘Here’s an aerial photograph of the farm,’ Pollard said. ‘Would you mark the position of the well-shaft as accurately as you can?’
Danby Blake switched on a reading lamp and bent over the photograph.
‘It was just about here,’ he said. ‘Quite near the house... I’m not sure you can’t see a bit of the sheet iron. Amazing what detail comes out in those things.’ He handed back the photograph with a wry grin, remarking that in spite of everything it made him feel a bit nostalgic.
Pollard and Toye left shortly afterwards for Stoneham.
‘Keep your eyes skinned for a call box,’ Pollard said. ‘I’m going to ask for Boyce and Strickland to come down overnight.’
‘Meaning that you’re getting a warrant and opening up this dud well tomorrow?’
‘This is it. We’ve got to have proper photographic records, and with any luck we’ll find the missing bones. It’s definitely a job for the boys.’
They stopped in the next village for Pollard to put through the call. Back in Stoneham he took the necessary steps to get a search warrant. It was late when at long last they reached their hotel. Pollard stifled a gigantic yawn.
‘“And the morning and the evening were the second day,”’ he quoted. ‘I can’t believe it. We seem to have been here for weeks.’
Toye, a churchman with an evangelical bias, looked momentarily askance, but agreed that he felt that way himself.
Chapter 6
Detective-Sergeants Boyce and Strickland, the photographic and finger-print experts of Pollard’s team, arrived by car in time for breakfast the next morning. In the course of the meal Pollard briefed them on the case and the job ahead.
‘That’ll be a new one on us, sir,’ Strickland said. ‘First time we’ve done a well for clues.’
‘Lucky there’s not much water in it,’ Boyce remarked. ‘We’ve left our skin-diving outfits behind.’
‘It certainly isn’t dry,’ Pollard said, anticipating censure from Toye on this levity. �
�Some water must seep in, judging from deposits on the skeleton, but it won’t interfere with the job. The thing is that you chaps have got to go to work like the archaeological blokes who shift soil with teaspoons. We want the missing bones, and some of ’em are damned small. Bash about, and we’ll never find ’em. I’m assuming for the moment that the skeleton came from the well,’ he added cautiously.
‘O.K., sir,’ Boyce and Strickland assured him, and exchanged brief winks.
‘Well, let’s get moving then. One of you had better collect some sandwiches. It could be a long job, and I don’t see Ling laying on lunch for us, do you, Toye?’
‘I’d be surprised,’ Toye replied seriously.
A small heap of official-looking mail was waiting for Pollard at the police station. Impatient to be off, he glanced quickly through the letters and passed them to Toye for filing. It was not until he picked up the last one that he stopped short of tearing it open, and stood staring at the featureless block capitals on a manila business envelope.
‘Look at this effort,’ he said. ‘Over to you Strickland. There might be a useful dab under the flap.’
The envelope was carefully slit and its contents, a folded half-sheet of typing paper, shaken on to the table and opened out with forceps. Its message was in block capitals similar to those on the envelope:
ASK PETER GRANT WHY HE WAS UP HALF THE NIGHT IN THE GARAGE AT UPWAY MANOR CLEANING HIS CAR INSIDE AND OUT ON 1 APRIL 1975.
‘Hoax?’ queried Toye. ‘A sort of April Fool?’
Suddenly While Gardening Page 7
