Crime In Leper's Hollow Read online

  Crime in Leper’s Hollow

  George Bellairs

  Copyright © George Bellairs 1952

  The right of George Bellairs to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

  First published in the United Kingdom in 1952 by Northumberland Press Ltd.

  This edition published in 2014 by Endeavour Press Ltd.

  To the sweet memory of Goofy, our bobtail sheepdog

  *

  I will not think those good brown eyes

  Have spent their light of truth so soon;

  But in some canine Paradise

  Your wraith, I know, rebukes the moon,

  And quarters every plain and hill,

  Seeking its master...As for me,

  This prayer at least the gods fulfil:

  That when I pass the flood, and see

  Old Charon by the Stygian coast

  Take toll of all the shades that land,

  Your little, faithful, barking ghost

  May leap to lick my phantom hand.

  St. John Lucas

  (By courteous permission of Constable & Co.)

  *

  “For the common people, when they hear that some frightful thing has befallen such a one in such a place, are of opinion that that place is haunted with some foul fiend or evil spirit; when, alas! it is for the fruit of their own doing that such things do befall them there.”

  John Bunyan.

  *

  This is a work of fiction, the characters are entirely imaginary, and no reference is made to or implied to any actual person, alive or dead.

  Table of Contents

  One – Death at Christmas

  Two – The Dancing Widow

  Three – The Bride Wore Black

  Four – Death at Beyle

  Five - Inquest

  Six – Lepers’ Hollow

  Seven – Commotion at St. Mark’s

  Eight – Discomfiture of Tom Trumper

  Nine – Mr Trotman Condescends

  Ten – Panic in Tilsey

  Eleven – The Terrified Prodigal

  Twelve - Elspeth

  Thirteen – Cromwell Sticks It Out

  Fourteen – Beatrice

  Fifteen – Julius Simpole Claims the Body

  Sixteen – Three Coffins

  Seventeen – The Sorrows of Mr Skrike

  Eighteen – The Frightened Man

  Nineteen – The Bar at the Airport

  Twenty – The Bell at Beyle

  Extract from Death Drops the Pilot by George Bellairs

  One – Death at Christmas

  ON the moors above Tilsey, several gentlemen from the town had gathered for Colonel Bulshaw’s Christmas shoot. There were still a few days to go before the Feast itself, but the gathering always bore that title. Grouse do not come amiss in the larder after a surfeit of turkey, and game was plentiful that year. Beaters were busy putting up the birds, the sportsmen strode banging away with their guns over the thick heather and bilberry, and Colonel Bulshaw himself, too portly to walk far, was being driven about in a jeep, greatly to the good of his liver. He blazed away with his guns and his tongue and blamed his driver for his bad shots.

  On the extreme edge of the ragged file of hunters, Nicholas Crake, Recorder of Tilsey, was pursuing an erratic course. He looked far from well; and no wonder. Overwork, family worries and, to crown all, a day on the moors in pouring rain were telling on his constitution. He was a medium-built, sturdy man, with a clean-shaven, legal face, large Roman nose and square determined chin. He wore a raincoat, leggings and a tweed cap and, in spite of the weather, had loosened his coat and pushed back his headgear, for his breath was coming with difficulty and he felt to have a temperature. By his side walked Murphy, his loader, dressed like a scarecrow and wet to the skin. Murphy never sought protection against the elements and seemed none the worse for it. Crake brought down two birds with a single shot and then handed his gun to Murphy.

  “I think I’ll pack up,” he said.

  Murphy opened the breach of the 12-bore and ejected the spent cartridge. Then he looked at Crake.

  “You don’t look so good, sir...What about a nip o’ brandy?”

  He paused and looked again at his companion. Crake’s eyes were glassy and bore in them no signs of recognition or even intelligence.

  “The court is adjourned for lunch...”

  Murphy sniggered dutifully, thinking the judge was just having his little joke.

  “We ’ad lunch two hours since, sir...”

  “Adjourn...”

  And with that, Crake collapsed in the heather.

  Murphy’s eyes popped. He passed his grubby hand over his face and wiped away the rain. Then he looked along the line of shooters and singled out the tall, bulky form of Dr. Bastable, heavily treading the turf and bringing down a bird with every shot.

  “Just a minute, yer honour...Jest a minute,” said Murphy politely to the prostrate form, and he set off and ran for help, bounding over the undergrowth like a gaunt jack-in-the-box.

  “Somethin’s up with Judge Crake,” he said, when he reached Bastable. He dodged the wet barrels of the doctor’s gun.

  “Eh?”

  The rain streamed down the doctor’s livid, chubby face and off the tip of his rounded chin. He was clothed from head to foot in oilskins and looked like the coxswain of a lifeboat.

  “Judge Crake...’e’s fell unconscious...”

  Bastable floundered along by Murphy’s side to where the body was lying. On the way, he fished out from beneath his strange garments a stethoscope and a thermometer in a shiny case. It looked as if he expected a professional consultation wherever he went and wasn’t going to be caught without his outfit. He knelt with difficulty beside the prostrate judge.

  “Get him home at once. Where’s his car?” he said, as he laboriously elevated himself to his feet.

  Crake suddenly opened one eye, like a child cheating at a game of hide-and-seek.

  “Take me to my sister’s,” he wheezed, and collapsed back on the heather.

  Murphy and the doctor eyed one another owlishly. Considering the wife he’d got, it wasn’t surprising that Crake preferred to trust himself to his sister in an emergency. Murphy shambled across the moor back to where Crake’s brother-in-law, Arthur Kent, was banging away at birds, oblivious of the drama going on not far away behind the curtain of stinging rain. On hearing the news, Kent, long, thin, nervy and morose, crossed the heather with quick strides and joined Bastable.

  An hour later, Crake was in bed in his sister’s spare room. at St. Mark’s, the Kents’ home. He was down with pneumonia. There was a glowing fire in the grate and his sister was attending to him with steady, capable hands. She was a small, fair woman of forty, or thereabouts, and had been a local beauty in her heyday. Now she had a slightly faded look. Her hair was touched with grey, there were shadows under her blue eyes and her generous mouth wore a sardonic twist. Living with Kent for twenty years had damped her spirits and embittered her. The faults were on both sides. Her affection for her brother, Nicholas, had always driven Kent to take second place in her life and he resented it. On the other hand, Kent, a successful lawyer in Tilsey, was temperamentally as dry as a stick and as cold as ice. How this incompatible pair ever came to wed was a local mystery.

  Outside, the rain still pelted down from a leaden sky. The wind seized the tall trees which ringed the house and tortured them like a giant trying to shake off the water as it fell. Crake was asleep, breathing harshly and muttering now and then to himself. Beatrice Kent kissed her brother’s damp forehead, clenched her hands until the nails bit into their palms, and stood looking through the
window on the scene of desolation around. Downstairs, Kent was seeing off the doctor.

  “He’ll be all. right...Pneumonia...Careful nursing, yer know...”

  Bastable breathed a blast of parting whisky in Kent’s face, crouched under a large coloured golf umbrella, and dived through the rain to his car. He held it in low gear as he coaxed it down the waterlogged lane which led from St. Mark’s to the main road. The water in the ruts swished noisily from the wheels in great wet fans which washed the hedges. As Bastable turned into the highway, a small sports car, driven at great speed, shot past him into the side-road. He had to swerve to avoid it.

  “The bitch!” he muttered round his cigarette and broke into paroxysms of smoker’s cough.

  It was Dulcie Crake, careering to take charge of her husband. She didn’t even ring the bell of St. Mark’s. She drove her car at top speed through the gateway and down the drive, stopped it with a squeal of tortured brakes, flung open the front door, and rushed inside. There was nobody in the hall.

  “Anyone about?” shouted Dulcie in a voice which sounded hurt that no reception had been prepared for her.

  She was a handsome, tall, well-built woman. Had she been fair instead of gipsy dark, she would have resembled a Wagnerian goddess. But she was half Spanish. Her father, British consul in a city of Spain — in days gone by the family liked to describe him as a diplomat! — had married the daughter of an impoverished grandee. Dulcie had inherited her mother’s features; fine high-bridged nose, with flaring nostrils; broad, low forehead; blue-black hair; gleaming, regular teeth; and delicate olive complexion. Histrionic and overdone though it was, the nurse’s uniform Dulcie wore set off her personal beauty, unspoiled in her early forties. She had done some voluntary work in a hospital during the war and, intent on supervising at her husband’s bedside, she had dressed the part. She always did; it was often inappropriate, but it always suited her appearance.

  “I’m in here. Nick’s in the spare room. He asked to be brought here...”

  Kent answered her from his chair in the dining-room. He was lolling there, finishing his whisky. He rose slowly and came into the hall. When the pair of them met, the atmosphere changed and grew charged with tense emotion.

  “H’m...Dressed like a proper little nurse...Really, Dulcie, you’re the ruddy limit...”

  “Arthur!”

  She drew herself close to him, as if expecting him to take her in his arms.

  “Stop it! Beatrice is about...and Nick’s sick. There’s a time and place for everything. Besides, I told you...”

  The door on the landing above opened and Beatrice stood there looking at the pair of them over the balusters. She drew her breath sharply. Whether it was Dulcie’s dress or her closeness to her husband, nobody knew. She descended quickly.

  “Why did they bring Nick here?” asked Dulcie by way of greeting. She hated Beatrice, resenting the bond which held her and Nick so closely.

  “He asked for it...”

  Dulcie mounted the stairs and rustled into the spare room, mentally chalking up another point against Nicholas and Beatrice. Below, Beatrice faced her husband.

  “Really! I saw the pair of you. Arthur...And Nick gravely ill in the house. To say nothing of me...”

  Kent made as if to take hold of his wife.

  “She’s nothing to me, Bee. I told you before. She doesn’t mean a thing to me. She’s that way with any man she comes across. How Nick puts up with it...”

  “I don’t want to discuss it any more...I saw you both and that’s enough...”

  “Can’t we...can’t you and I...?”

  “I have the hot bottles to fill...”

  “I’ll help...”

  He was eager to justify himself and followed her, like a lapdog, into the kitchen.

  “We’ve gone over it all before. It’s no use, Arthur...”

  She filled a kettle and switched on the current.

  Kent made as if to plead again, then shrugged his shoulders and left the room.

  Beatrice Kent looked wearily round the kitchen as she waited for the water. Margery, the maid, had gone to her sister’s with presents for the children’s Christmas. There was holly draped over the picture of Queen Victoria which hung on the wall and a bunch of mistletoe rotated over the outer door, an invitation from Margery to the milkman, on whom she had designs. Beatrice remembered that she had forgotten to buy-in the Christmas decorations. She had no heart for it. The Christmas spirit between her and Arthur was spurious and put on to deceive Margery and the Thompsons, with whom they usually had dinner at The Bull, in Tilsey, on Christmas Day. They wore paper caps and flung streamers about like the rest, but her own heart was in the past, with Nicholas at their old home at Christmas gone by.

  The kettle began to bubble and she finished her task. Dulcie was removing a clinical thermometer from Nick’s mouth when his sister entered.

  “Dr. Bastable’s done all that, Dulcie. His temperature’s a hundred and three...”

  “Bastable’s a drunken fool! That’s why I came to look after things. Nursing’s vital in pneumonia. If Nick doesn’t improve, I shall call in Archer...”

  Beatrice noticed the acid, purring tones of her sister-in-law. Her anger rose.

  “And why has Nick suddenly become so important to you, Dulcie? You’ve neglected him and made him miserable for years with your silly affairs. If you hadn’t worried him so, he’d never have fallen a victim to this...”

  “I don’t care what you think. Nick’s very dear to me. He’s the father of my children. You won’t understand such a bond, Beatrice, will you?”

  Beatrice bit her lip.

  “...Which reminds me; I ought to get the children home. They would be away for Christmas, just when I need them most. Alec’s in Paris and Nita’s in London with the Mackenzies...I’ll have to ’phone some telegrams to them when I’ve fixed up Nick. By the way, I shall want a bed made up here in the room. I won’t leave him till the crisis is over...”

  Beatrice smiled. It was like a third-rate melodrama. The errant wife repenting at the bedside of the sick husband.”Yes; there’s a camp-bed in the attic...”

  “A camp-bed? I couldn’t...”

  “That’s all we’ve got. Unless you want a bed making up on the floor...”

  “Very well. But you might be a bit more sympathetic at a time like this. I’ve always wanted to be your friend, Beatrice...”

  “Treat Nick better, then, if you want my regard...”

  Dusk had fallen and Beatrice put on the lights and drew the curtains. The rain was abating under the strength of the wind, which caught and bellied the material.

  “I’ve fastened the casement. The little window at the top will provide enough air. Have you had any food, Dulcie?”

  Dulcie pouted and tried to look like a martyr.

  “I never gave it a thought and I’m not hungry.”

  “Don’t be silly! I’ll send you up a tray when Margery gets in. She’s due any time. Unless you want to have a meal with me and Arthur...”

  She said it diffidently. When Arthur and Dulcie got together, she felt quite out of the picture. They’d thought she never noticed anything, but she’d long been aware that her husband was completely fascinated by his sister-in-law. Whenever she saw them together, she watched Arthur following Dulcie with his eyes, gobbling her up with them, eager to please her and flatter her. And Dulcie parading her charms, impudently and shamelessly, like a nasty, purring she-cat. Then, Arthur had cooled off. No wonder! He was fundamentally respectable and he had a well-established position in the town. A churchwarden and prominent freemason. It wouldn’t do for his name to be mixed up with that of another woman, especially his sister-in-law. Arthur had retreated. But not, it seemed to Beatrice, before something intimate, maybe a furtive, unstable affair, had gone on between him and Dulcie. Beatrice had sensed it in Dulcie’s conduct. That feline, possessive way she had at one time developed when Arthur showed himself. Now, Arthur was trying, rather pathetically, to extricate
himself, unsuccessfully attempting to wheedle his way back into Beatrice’s affections, avoiding Dulcie and thereby seemingly adding fuel to her flame.

  “I’d rather stay with Nick. He’ll need me if he wakes...”

  The barbed shaft fell without making the least impression on Beatrice. She knew just how she and Nick stood. They had become estranged when they married. Nick never thought much of Arthur, whose parsimony and narrowness he despised. He’d never been good enough for Bee. And Nick’s brief infatuation and whirlwind wooing and wedding of Dulcie had left her stupefied. In fact, when Arthur proposed shortly after Nick’s wedding, Beatrice had said Yes almost without thinking what it implied. Anything to get away from the home so forlorn and cold after Nick had gone. Now, Dulcie and Arthur between them had forged the old bond between brother and sister stronger than ever.

  Dulcie was eyeing Beatrice curiously. She was wondering what Arthur ever found in her. A mouse! A small-town girl. All right, of course, for Nick, the pipe-and-slipper man, the dog-lover, the simple-simon. But Arthur...Educated, sophisticated, ambitious, travelled and hiding a passionate nature behind his legal mask...How could Beatrice...?

  “I’ll send up the tray then...”

  Nick’s temperature was down and he was sleeping quietly at bedtime. Bastable’s medicine was acting already and the patient had responded well to treatment. Beatrice was almost ready to scream with nerves. Bad enough to have her only brother sick on her hands, without Dulcie fussing. They’d made up the bed and then all Dulcie’s fantastic preparations for the night had to be faced. About a dozen telephone calls to start with. Everybody had to know that Nick was ill and his wife stricken and watching by his bedside. Then, of course, Dulcie had brought no things for the night. And she could never rest in the borrowed attire which Beatrice offered her. Nothing would do but that Arthur should go to the Crake home and bring them. At first, Dulcie had suggested going with Arthur in the car. Arthur had then trumped up the excuse that he’d another call to make. He could pick them up, but it would be awkward for Dulcie waiting whilst he did his business. Arthur, who only a week or two since had been making any excuse to get Dulcie to himself, was now backing down! It ended by more telephoning to the Crake maid to pack a bag with dozens of things, including a mass of cosmetics and medicaments.