Outrage on Gallows Hill Read online

  Outrage on Gallows Hill

  A Thomas Littlejohn Mystery

  George Bellairs

  MYSTERIOUSPRESS.COM

  1.

  NIGHT IN THE VILLAGE

  “Charming night, friend of criminals.”

  CHARLES BAUDELAIRE

  THE night of Tuesday, September 25th, 1945, was as black as pitch in the village of Ravelstone. The rural council, jealous of the beauty of the place, would have nothing to do with street lamps. Most of the houses had their curtains or blinds drawn and you couldn’t see an inch before your nose.

  Lovers who had not made a precise rendezvous were hunting about for one another like participants in a game of blind-man’s-buff. Those whose affairs were open and above board called each other softly by name and ultimately met, greatly to their joy and satisfaction. The clandestine ones, however, had a bad time, and many of them returned home very late and in an exhausted condition after fruitlessly prowling in the dark for hours.

  The only bright spot in the village was the house of Mrs. Cliffe-Wynrowe, the would-be leader of musical activities. She had all the lights on and the curtains drawn back as far as they would go, and she was to be seen thrashing the piano, flinging her long, thin arms up and down and contorting her body like an epileptic for the benefit of passers-by.

  Lack of illumination, however, was made up for by noise, for the bellringers were hard at it in mid-week practice. Six of their team of eight had turned up and to the expert campanologists of the place the racket had a dot-and-carry-one sound, like a man with a wooden leg. And there was young Jukes, too, just learning the art. His bell gave tongue right on the heels of its forerunner or straight on top of its follower, but never anywhere near midway.

  In the Women’s Institute a gathering of bored ladies were listening to a lecture. It should have been by Mrs. Topnott, of the neighbouring village of Ditchling Episcopi, on Some Jams I have Made, but the good woman had that morning sprained her ankle and had sent her husband to deputise. Canon Bamford Topnott, M.A., F.R.G.S., was therefore giving his well-known masterpiece “Bern-Lötschberg-Simplon,” and conducting the members of the Institute, who hadn’t been advised of the change until it was too late to keep away, through Switzerland. The vicar of Ravelstone was in the chair.

  The Rev. Tancred Turncote presided with one eye on the clock. He was a widower himself, but his prolific daughter, whose husband was in the Army, was living with him with her young family of four. They had no maid and there was another grandchild for the vicar imminent, so he was combining domestic with pastoral duties at the time. Estimating the lecture would end at nine, he had left porridge for the morrow’s breakfast simmering on the hob. At nine-fifteen, with Topnott only half way over the Gemmi Pass, Mr. Turncote could stand it no longer. Twitching with nervous emotion he made a furious assault on his friend’s coat-tails and told him his time was up. After a whispered conversation and a bit of an argument, the two parsons departed, fortified by a vote of thanks, leaving the women stranded on the Gemmi but eagerly making preparations for getting on with half an hour’s leatherwork in spite of it.

  If you could have lifted off the roofs of many of the houses of Ravelstone you would have seen the usual evening’s activities well under way. Children being put to bed, neighbours playing bridge together, wives knitting or doing housework, with husbands snoozing before the fire, reading the paper, listening to the wireless or just paralysed by boredom. In the local, The Bird in Hand, the regulars were just warming up and the darts team were at it like mad.

  Mr. Rawlings, who kept rabbits and did a rare trade in skins, was busy feeding his livestock, and Old Turvey was wringing the neck of one of his cock chickens for tomorrow’s dinner.

  George Shortt, who, under the pseudonym of Maude Temple wrote best-selling romances, rose from the desk in his bungalow on Gallows Hill in despair. He had fallen more desperately in love than any of his own heroes and didn’t seem to have a ghost of a chance. The vision of a lovely woman came between him and his romantics, and the stuff just wouldn’t flow. Slapping his feverish brow, he rushed into the open air and raised frantic arms to the invisible sky.

  Hilary Paget, who turned out thrillers in a modernised cottage in the village, looked up from his typewriter with such a malevolent gleam in his eyes that his wife, who had found him moody and neglectful of late, put on her outdoor clothes and went for a walk alone rather than sit in the same room with him.

  And Professor D’Arcy Lever, who held the chair in Psychology in the nearby University of Melchester, was quarrelling furiously with his wife, too. They had not married for love, but as a working partnership. The books of Robert and Clarice D’Arcy Lever are well known. Robert without Clarice would be like sausage without mash! But he had become a bit intractable. If the secret were only known, Clarice had always made the bullets for Robert to fire, and now he had grown resentful of the grip in which she held him … He tossed the galleys of their latest work on the floor, put on his hat, and went into the dark before she could ask, as usual, where he was going …

  Dr. Paul Gell, village practitioner, kissed his wife, Patricia, herself a qualified physician, and went off to a confinement which he had bet her would end in twins …

  And P.C. Joseph Costain, who shared with P.C. William Butt the administration of law and order in the adjacent villages of Ravelstone and Ditchling Episcopi, welcomed the darkness, for he himself had committed a crime!

  It was a very human sort of crime and one which we would probably have done ourselves in similar circumstances.

  Patrolling round the byways, the constable had heard familiar rustling sounds accompanied by amorous noises and, flashing his bright lamp over the hedge, had illuminated a covey of partridges, settled, they thought, for the night. Instinctively, for he was a countryman born, with poachers among his forebears, Costain had flung his cape over the dazzled game and before he knew what he was doing he had screwed the necks of three of the largest. Now he was gently descending Gallows Hill, which led to the centre of the village and his own back door, with the spoil wrapped in the same cape, and hoping nobody would intercept him on the way.

  The church clock struck a quarter to ten. At ten o’clock P.C. Butt, of Ditchling, was due to relieve Costain. Just time to get the birds indoors.

  Although events relentlessly unfolding themselves were eventually to bring Joe Costain his heart’s desire, it is always well to remember that God moves in a mysterious way His wonders to perform!

  There was murder in Ravelstone that night and the partridges never saw the village police house. Instead, Will Butt found them and took them home to Ditchling!

  Just as Costain and his loot were reaching the home stretch, Ronald Free reluctantly tore himself from the arms of Laura Cruft and emerged from the garden of Apple Tree Farm. He seemed to be walking on air. He had needed to depart quickly and impulsively or he would have been there all night. Laura had just said she would marry him after a long siege and they were both in the seventh heaven of bliss.

  Ronald, who had just taken his degree in English and French literature, had obtained a job as junior master at a minor public school. He was by way of being a minor poet, too, and burst into ecstatic verse as he levitated home.

  Quand vous serez bien vieile, au soir, à la chandelle,

  Assise auprès du feu, devidant et filant,

  Direz, chantant mes vers, en vous esmerveillant:

  Ronsard me celebroit du temps que j’estois belle.

  He’d made a rough translation for his girl. Not so good as yet, but ready for polishing up.

  When you are very old, at eve, by candle, there,

  Sitting before the fire, spinning and pondering,

  You’ll say, s
inging my songs and greatly wondering:

  Ronald immortalised me in days when I was fair.

  A bit free and the metre wrong, perhaps. And a bit of a cheek putting his own name in place of Ronsard’s. But for Laura he’d do anything …

  Je seray sous la terre, et, fantosme sans os …

  Very sad. His emotion brought a lump to Ronald’s throat.

  I’ll be dead then, and, phantom without form …

  Laura never knew about the poem Free had translated and mangled in her honour. Death was upon him before he could recite another word to the darkness around. P.C. Costain stumbled over his body as it lay in the gutter. He had been garotted with a piece of binder twine.

  At first, the constable thought Free was drunk, but when by the light of his lamp, he saw first the livid face, with the tongue gripped between the teeth, then the cruel cord biting into his throat, he changed his views. Costain flung his partridges over the hedge. Next, he took out his knife, cut the twine and felt for Free’s pulse. The lad was quite dead …

  The doctor’s house was at the bottom of Gallows Hill. There was a small plate, Dr. Gell, on the gate. The bobby ran full tilt up the garden path and nearly knocked down the door in his haste. Mrs. Gell stood framed in the doorway.

  “Is the doctor in, Mrs. Gell?”

  “No. He’s out on a case. Will I do?”

  Costain remembered that Mrs. Gell was a doctor, too.

  “Yes, yes, Mrs. Gell. Somebody’s done for young Ronald Free. He’s lyin’ dead up the road …”

  The church clock struck ten and Costain, recollecting his rendezvous with P.C. Butt, blew his whistle. Butt pedalled up on his bicycle almost at once. Doors opened in the village street and people emerged trying to find out what the commotion was about. Questioning voices rose and fell and then it was unanimously decided that some belated boy scout had been whistling to keep up his morale in the dark. So all the doors closed again …

  They carried the body into the doctor’s surgery and Mrs. Gell examined it closely. Costain watched her competent fingers at work. She had lovely hands. The policeman, who was at heart a poet, momentarily forgot the tragedy. Mrs. Gell was his idea of what a woman ought to be. She had fair hair which reminded one of wind and sunshine and straight, honest grey eyes. Her nose was finely arched and delicate, her brows clear and intelligent, and her complexion like milk and roses. She was built like a goddess and although she held her head proudly, she was kind. There was character in her, too, and this added a kind of spiritual grace to her physical beauty.

  “She moves like a piece of poethry,” mused P.C. Costain, quoting T. E. Brown, his particular favourite, for the bobby was a Manxman and proud of it.

  “Dead as a door-nail,” breathed P.C. Butt hoarsely in Costain’s ear.

  The Manxman shook himself, blushed and looked sheepish. Good Lord! Dreaming and reciting poetry to himself with a corpse on his hands.

  “May I use your ’phone please, Mrs. Gell?”

  “Yes, Costain. Better let your people at Melchester know. Meanwhile, the body can stay here. Poor boy!”

  Dr. Paul Gell arrived home. He was tall, in his middle thirties, and he had a mop of unruly fair hair.

  “You were right, Pat. It wasn’t twins … I owe you five bob …”

  His wife pointed to the body on the couch. Gell’s blue eyes opened wide. “Hullo … Good God!”

  The Melchester police didn’t believe in letting the grass grow under their feet. They sent for help to Scotland Yard at once. Rather unusual. But then the Chief Constable, Sir Guy Carey, was an unusual man. He was a close friend of the Assistant Commissioner and knew the limitations of his own men, the majority of whom were down with the ’flu in any case. Sir Guy had won battles in North Africa, whence he had not long returned, by quick decisions after rapidly sizing-up the situation. He cut straight through red-tape and formalities.

  Detective-Inspector Littlejohn of the C.I.D., Metropolitan Police, arrived in Ravelstone the following day.

  “You lucky fellow,” said Butt to Costain, when the Chief had made his decision in the small hours. “Got a murder right on your doorstep and a Scotland Yard bloke to do the work while you gets the stripes. Had a bit o’ luck meself, too, jest now. Found three loverly partridges near the scene ’o the crime as I was huntin’ round. Don’t know ’ow they come there. Bit of a mystery. But hardly likely to be mixed up with this business. So, I’m takin’ ’em ’ome … Nuff said.”

  P.C. Costain’s remarks are not on record!

  2.

  DEAD MAN’S BUSINESS

  Fro thennesforth he rideth up and down

  And everything com him to remembraunce

  As he rod for-by places of the town …

  GEOFFREY CHAUCER (Troilus and Cressida)

  THE train was full of forces men going home on leave and some belated holidaymakers on their way to the coast. Everybody was good tempered. A homely woman in tweeds insisted on giving the Inspector two chicken sandwiches; three officers returning from India were ecstatic in their praise of British railways; and a little girl with flaxen pigtails, having taken a fancy to him, gave Littlejohn two sticky barley-sugar sweets and saw to it that he ate them.

  “Quite an Indian summer,” said the lady in tweeds, looking at the sunlit scene flying past the windows. The three young officers from India thereupon laughed loudly and ironically, and put her in possession of the full facts about the Indian climate.

  They all seemed very sorry when Littlejohn said goodbye at Melchester, and the girl with the flaxen hair hung out of the window and waved to him until he was out of sight.

  The old cathedral city, capital of Midshire, looked trim and bright. They had scraped off the blackout paint from the glass roof of the station, and stuck a few shrubs in tubs in the main hall. Littlejohn counted two men in straw hats and quite a number in open-necked shirts. Hikers, toiling and moiling under huge rucksacks, earnestly sought trains and information, and a lackey in a plum coloured frock-coat and a gold-braided hat shepherded a number of new arrivals and their baggage in the direction of the Spa Hotel.

  It all gave Littlejohn the holiday feeling.

  A tall, heavy-faced man dashed up to the Inspector.

  “Inspector Littlejohn? I met you once when I was having a look round Scotland Yard on my holidays. Got a good memory for faces. My name’s Stanley. I’m in charge of the Ravelstone case …”

  Littlejohn felt that his own name ought to have been Livingstone, and wondered if the newcomer was giving his christian name or surname.

  “Inspector Stanley, of the Midshire County Police. Very glad to have you with us, sir.”

  Stanley was a bit of a dandy as far as the dignity of his public office would allow. Brown suede shoes, green felt hat worn at a slouch, light grey suit, and a blue and white polka-dot tie. His hands were well-kept and he wore a large gold ring on his little finger. He bustled Littlejohn to the cab-rank, greeting passers-by on the way.

  “What about a drink, Inspector Littlejohn?”

  “I could do with a cup of tea …”

  “Tea? Right. Drive to The Mikado, driver. You’ll get a good view of the cathedral there, Inspector …”

  Littlejohn imagined himself on a sightseeing tour.

  They arrived at a café decorated in black and gold mock-Japanese style. The manageress beamed on them and conducted them to a table on the first floor. On the way, everybody recognised Stanley and smiled at Littlejohn.

  “Mornin’, Inspector. Nice day!”

  “Good morning, Mr. Stanley. How are you?”

  “Hullo, Stanley. How’s things?”

  Like a triumphal procession. There was a special flutter among the women there. Stanley was the most eligible bachelor in town.

  They sat in the window alcove. Outside, the view was splendid. The great, lovely cathedral with its peaceful close, and a lot of quaint old houses and shops fresh from an Arthur Rackham drawing. Expensive cars threading their ways through the narrow streets,
and dignified ladies and men in gaiters and clerical dog-collars passing to and fro.

  “Would you like to see the body before we go over to Ravelstone, sir? It’s in the mortuary here …”

  “The body?” said Littlejohn. “Oh, yes, the body …”

  They were drinking their second cup of tea. Stanley smoked Russian cigarettes and Littlejohn had one in his mouth. The Inspector had accepted and lit it before he knew what he was doing. Stanley never stopped talking. He fidgeted with his tie, too, and cast self-conscious glances at the ladies as though calling on them to observe him in conference with Scotland Yard.

  The bishop and his lady entered and everybody looked ready to rise as before Royalty. Then the stir died away, and his Lordship settled down to demolish a pile of flatulent cakes leaking with synthetic cream. “Decent chap, the bishop. I sometimes go to his wife’s At Home. Pays you to keep in with the clerical nobs in a place like this. Where was I …? Oh, yes. Young fellow called Ronald Free was murdered at Ravelstone last night. As far as we can see, right under the local bobby’s nose. You know what these country police are. Probably the fellow was smoking under a hedge or something …”

  Littlejohn grunted. In his mind’s eye he saw a procession of worthy country policemen. Harriwinkle, Mellalieu, Charles Haddon Spurgeon Sadd, and a lot more. Good fellows every one. He resented the slur.

  “Generally, a sound, hard-working lot …”

  “Oh, sure. Don’t get me wrong. Just my little joke, sir. Well, the local constable, chap called Costain, came across the body in the gutter. Strangled with a piece of string. Can you beat it?”

  Littlejohn didn’t answer. He was watching the bishop lowering his fourth cake and drinking his third cup of tea. Tremendous appetites some of these parsons!

  Stanley hitched his polka dots vigorously, nodded to a tall, fair-haired girl who had just entered, and blushed. The bishop, too, forgot his cakes for a minute and greeted the newcomer. His voice reminded Littlejohn of lather.

  “As I was saying … Young Free was murdered and found by Costain. It seems he’d just got engaged to the village beauty, a girl called Laura Cruft. Whether some rival did it, I don’t know. The men were round her like bees round a honey-pot, and it took her a long time to make up her mind. Even then, young Free wasn’t so sure, by all accounts. She’d broken it off with two before him.”