The Dead Shall be Raised and The Murder of a Quack Page 11

  The place was furnished like a bed-sitting room of the better-class Kensington variety. In one corner, a large, old-fashioned bed, with a canopy. A small table in the centre of the room; two comfortable easy-chairs; a Turkish carpet underfoot, and three striking water-colours on the walls.

  A bright fire burned in the hearth and beside it, in a straight-backed chair, placed so that she could have a direct view of the scene through the window, sat Mrs. Myles. She looked very old. Her face was small and wrinkled, but her complexion was healthy and pink. She had clear, glittering, brown eyes. Her hair was white, plaited, and gathered back in a bun behind. The lips were tight, but the mouth large and generous. Broad, wrinkled forehead, serene, and with a touch of nobility about it. She had a fine, large nose, with wide, proud nostrils and a firm, rounded chin. Her voice was gentle, clear in tone, but with a trace of weariness in it. There seemed little of infirmity in her manner, but an air of sadness about it, unhappy, such as is worn by those who have no illusions left.

  “I must apologize to you for bringing you up here, but I never leave this room now,” she said, after the detective had introduced himself. She displayed little anxiety or curiosity concerning the purpose of his visit. “The ’phone here is my link with the outside world when I want anything, which is rare. The world has left me far behind, and I doubt if I would know it if I went out into it now. Only the little bit visible through that window, hasn’t changed since I was a girl. The stairs are too much for me these days.”

  They talked generalities for a minute or two. Littlejohn admired the pictures, especially one of the moorland road with which he was now so familiar, and in which the ubiquitous Horse and Jockey again appeared.

  “You like them, Inspector? I call that one ‘The Moorland Road’. It was done by a friend of mine…dead these forty years…the best thing he ever did, I think. He’d have gone a long way…he died at twenty-four.”

  The detective told Mrs. Myles why he had called.

  “It’s a world of twenty years ago that I’m here to consult you about, Mrs. Myles. You’ll have heard, no doubt, about the rather sensational re-opening of the Trickett-Sykes murder case?”

  “Yes. My housekeeper seems to have gathered all the news about it.”

  “I wonder, if it won’t tire you, whether you’d be good enough to tell me the tale of how Haythornthwaite, Trickett, and Sykes came to leave your employ and whether in doing so, they incurred the enmity of anyone in particular?”

  The old lady grew stern and thrust out a quivering jaw.

  “Yes,” she snapped. “They incurred my lifelong enmity for one, and when two of that unholy trio died violently, I didn’t feel a pang of regret. A pity the third and worst of ’em didn’t die at the same time!”

  The fire then seemed to die out of her. She gasped for breath, as though emotion had exhausted her, wiped her lips on her handkerchief, and grew very calm again. She smoothed-down the black serge dress she was wearing.

  “My tale’s a long one, Inspector, and covers thirty-five years or more, but it can be told briefly. My husband died young, in his forties, in 1912. I was left with two boys, both at school, and the old family foundry to keep going until they were able to take it over themselves. We specialized in woollen-weaving machinery, looms, you know. Michael, the elder, should have gone to Cambridge, but when his father died, came into the works. Patrick stayed-on at school. Micky was a born engineer and settled-in fine. There they are…”

  She forlornly indicated the framed photographs of two handsome boys in khaki officers’ uniforms, standing on the table.

  “Micky was killed in Gallipoli in 1915; Pat, at Cambrai in 1917. They were all I’d got left and when Pat went, too, I seemed to die as well.”

  The old lady took a drink from a Thermos jug standing on the mantelpiece.

  “By the way, Inspector, please smoke if you wish. I’m going to.” She offered him a box of cigarettes. He helped himself and lighted hers and his own. She puffed away with the practised ease of a man.

  “Whilst my husband was alive, he himself managed the foundry,” resumed Mrs. Myles. “After his death, I asked Caleb Haythornthwaite, a young man, whom my husband had taken from the shops and trained personally to the rank of under-manager, to take charge. I followed my husband as managing-director. I knew little about the trade at first, but I soon learned. I set myself out to do so, because my first and foremost task in life thereafter was to keep the goodwill and reputation of the family concern at the high level it had reached under my husband and his father before him. Sykes was a favourite of Haythornthwaite’s and he took him under his wing and trained him as his right-hand man. I didn’t mind, provided it was to the good of the concern as a whole.”

  Mrs. Myles sat back and seemed to retire within herself for a while, as though consulting memory. Then, she took up the tale again.

  “Haythornthwaite was of poor breed, however, and soon began to show his true colours. Power and authority grew to be too much for him. He began to grow familiar with me. Then…I’ll never forget that morning…it was in my private room and he did such a lot of hemming and hawing before he came to the point…he suggested that in double-harness we’d make a grand partnership. In other words, would I marry him? The impudent lout…I soon brought him to earth! Had one of the men in the moulding-shop asked me to marry him, I’d have thanked him for the compliment. But Haythornthwaite…well…he might have been doing me a favour, the way he put it. Next time he came for a serious talk, he was different. He wanted a seat on the Board. That was the end, as far as I was concerned. I’d put up with enough. I told him that I regarded myself as trustee for my boys and under no circumstances would I sell one tittle of their birthright. He’d been fluttering round Luke Cross for a time, and I guessed what he’d do. He resigned and took a partnership with Luke. He left the same weekend, taking his pals, Sykes and Trickett with him. The following Monday, I got word that Micky had been killed.”

  Mrs. Myles’s hands gripped the arms of her chair as though she were living through the ordeal all over again. Then she relaxed.

  “In spite of the way I despised those three turncoats, I missed them. They were the three best men I’d got. I filled their places from the ranks, but without the thought of Mick coming back, it wasn’t the same. Still, there was Pat to think of, and I had to pull myself together. We were on munitions at the time and were making good profits. Haythornthwaite soon had Cross’s on the same footing and from being a more or less moribund place, Luke Cross’s foundry sprang into great activity. I discovered that the trio had taken with them many of the ideas which really were the property of my company, but I couldn’t put-up any fight at the time, because the law was then concerned with munitions, more munitions, and yet more munitions.”

  “Yes,” said Littlejohn. “You’d probably have made yourself very unpopular if you’d started anything at the time.”

  “There was, however, a limited amount of trade on the old lines, repairs and renewals, and a bit of new stuff in the way of looms. After all, the clothing mills were hard at it making cloth for the forces. Now, it came to my notice that work on some of the looms we’d made for West Riding factories, was going to Cross’s, instead of coming back to my place. I found that they were price-cutting and using our ideas, so I sent a man to investigate one of the jobs they’d done. They’d used a patent Micky had brought out during his spell at the works! I felt I’d got them at last. I sent for Haythornthwaite and told him what I knew. He’d made a bad slip and knew it. He grovelled, offered to pay, begged me to overlook it. I told him I was still trustee for my son and would make an example of him, not only on the one count, but on the way he and his two confederates had filched other rights and secrets of my place and used them against me. I told him the next thing he’d hear would be from my lawyer.”

  Mrs. Myles passed her hand over her forehead. She was tiring. She took another drink.

&nbs
p; “Don’t trouble with any more to-day. I’ll call again, Mrs. Myles,” said Littlejohn, anxious not to press his enquiry to the point of exhausting the old lady.

  “There’s not much more to tell, Inspector. Before my solicitor had properly taken the affair in hand, I got news of Pat’s death in France. That finished it. I called the whole thing off. No use flogging a dead horse. What was the use? The foundry ceased to interest me. Peace came, I’d lost my zest for work, I neglected the place. Meanwhile, Haythornthwaite gained confidence through my not pursuing him…But, he was working alone then. You see, the death of Trickett had intervened, and Sykes was branded as his murderer. Haythornthwaite had got rid of…No, perhaps that sounds as though I were accusing him of the double murder…I can’t do that, although I wouldn’t put it past him. Let’s say, the two men who held the evidence of the dirty work he’d done against my place were dead. Luke Cross retired and left Caleb in possession. Since then, Haythornthwaite hasn’t looked back. Gradually things went from bad to worse with me. I just got out in time to pay twenty shillings in the pound. I sold-up the old home and retired here with my memories. And here I am.”

  They sat in silence for a while. Then, “Any more questions, Inspector?” asked Mrs. Myles.

  “Just another one or two, if you feel up to them, Mrs. Myles.”

  “Yes?”

  “I understand that Buller, the gamekeeper, the man who seems to have been the last to see the murdered pair alive, was once a family servant of yours, and remained more or less faithful to you until his death, although he worked for Sir Caleb after you sold your shoot. Did he ever tell you anything about what he saw on the fatal evening?”

  “No. I saw very little of him after he left my employ. The shoot was one of the first things I sold, and Haythornthwaite bought it through an agent, otherwise he’d never have got it. I was fond of a gun in those days…”

  She looked keenly at Littlejohn.

  “Now don’t be thinking I took a gun to that pretty pair, Inspector, because you’re barking up the wrong tree there.”

  “The idea never entered my head, Mrs. Myles.”

  “I was far enough away from the moor that afternoon. I was at the Elvers’, at Waterfold, taking tea with them. Old friends of mine, every one of ’em now dead. So they can’t speak for me.”

  Littlejohn rose and bade Mrs. Myles good-bye.

  “Good-bye, Inspector. I hope you’ll soon lay the culprit by the heels. You’ll have a tough job on, I’m thinking.”

  “Good-bye, Mrs. Myles, and thanks. I hope I’ve not tired you by all this questioning.”

  “No. It does me good to have company and a talk now and then, even if I do reap-up past grievances…I’m glad you like my pictures…And now, I’ll have a nap before my cup of tea…”

  The maid entered again in response to Mrs. Myles’s ring. Littlejohn followed the girl downstairs. At the foot of the stairs, they passed a tall, masculine woman with a heavy, square face and dark, scowling eyebrows. Evidently the housekeeper. She fixed Littlejohn with a stare and eyed him up and down, but did not speak.

  “Now what’s bitten you?” thought Littlejohn.

  The housekeeper followed the Inspector and the maid with her eyes and, as the street door closed on him, the detective imagined her still standing in the dark hall, grimly watching him off.

  He was glad to be in the fresh air again, gratefully lit his pipe and strode off to attend to the next item on his agenda.

  Chapter XIII

  Peter’s Pantry

  The hungry sheep look up, and are not fed,

  But swoln with wind…

  —Milton

  Peter’s Pantry in Market Place, Hatterworth, is one of those places where the appetite is never satisfied. Unable to afford the luxury of a chef, Peter Buller, the proprietor, compromised with sparse sandwiches, eggs-on-toast, Scotch woodcocks, Cornish pasties, and a dozen or more culinary frills and furbelows, a perfect geography book of unsubstantial gewgaws. And lest, after such trifling, the yawning stomach should still cry for more, there was another tour of the British Isles or the Continent available in the form of flatulent Eccles cakes, Bath buns, Bury simnels, Bakewell tarts, Banbury cakes, Swiss rolls, and meringues Chantilly. The whole topped-off with a wash of Indian, China or Russian tea. Let the trenchermen go and eat the ordinary at the commercial “Barley Mow” (R.A.C. Inn., C.T.C.,) or the more dignified “Herald Angels” (A.A.**, R.A.C.). Peter’s Pantry was for the thrifty genteel, the underpaid clerk or typist, or the gastric carefree who could, without internal protest or spasm, load their stomachs with puff and weight.

  It was about noon when Littlejohn entered the place on his way from Mrs. Myles’s and business was just warming-up. He chose a table in a quiet corner, only to be joined, a moment later, by a nervous-looking clergyman, who, in spite of the number of empty tables scattered nearby, seemed to prefer the security of the big detective’s companionship and ordered a boiled egg, lightly done, if you please. Littlejohn asked the waitress if he could see the proprietor, and was told that Mr. Buller was out at the moment, but was due to return at any time. He called for a coffee to justify his presence there meanwhile.

  The place was dark and imitation candles, with feeble filaments, set in sconces in an attempt to give an olde worlde atmosphere, failed miserably to do anything but create a morgue-like feast of spectres. The only bit of cheer about the place was in the shop in front of the café, into which boys wearing the caps of some school or other, came and went and bore away quantities of doughnuts and custard tarts.

  A funeral party was in progress, too, and the black-clad celebrants occupied a long table mounted on a dais at the far end of the room. Having disposed of their duties to the dead, they were, as far as rationed bake-meats would allow, discharging their dues to the living by cheering-up the widower with quips and chatter, which caused him to smile with becoming restraint. Laughter or tears did not impair his appetite, however, and he ate his way steadily through several plates of canned tongue, piles of bread, large helpings of tinned pears and innumerable sweet cakes, with sublime contempt for the Ministry of Food and greatly to the satisfaction of the other guests, who said one to another that he was “taking it well”.

  Enthroned among the rest of the customers sat a portly man, with a bald head, like an egg thrusting itself from a deep, stiff collar. He was the mortgagee of the premises and came regularly every day to eat two boiled eggs, which, in their white cups, looked like small replicas of him. Now and then, he would raise his eyes, which were like cloudy-grey poached eggs, from his plate and scan the place critically, as though putting the whole lot under the auctioneer’s hammer then and there. On the table adjacent to Littlejohn and his parson, who by this time was chasing the underdone slime oozing out of his cracked eggshell across his plate, a crowd of men began to play dominoes and soon covered the baize cloth with strings of spots and blanks. They played with intense preoccupation and gravity, shouting with enthusiasm as they pursued their courses, and concentrating as if the whole world depended upon their being able to keep up the endless chain of black specks. The parson smiled at Littlejohn, nodded his head in the direction of the players and mumbled “Domino, dirige nos!” blushed to the roots of his hair, rushed off to pay his bill and was not seen again.

  Littlejohn was relieved when the waitress arrived to inform him that Mr. Buller was in his office, and could now spare him a few minutes. The girl led him upstairs to a small room, where sat the proprietor ready to give audience. Peter Buller was a small, thick-set man with a pleasant, round, clean-shaven face and a head of thin grey hair, plastered carefully down. He had started life as a grocer’s boy, but after marrying a masterful woman, had launched-out into confectionery and, then, catering. He was holding Littlejohn’s card between a thick finger and thumb and looking perplexed, when the detective entered. He seemed relieved when he learned that the visit concerned only the
history of his late father.

  “He’s been dead these ten years, Inspector,” said Buller. “But, no doubt, I can help you if you’ll say exactly what you’re after.”

  “Your father was the last man to see the murdered pair alive, with the exception of the actual killer, of course…”

  Mr. Buller shuddered.

  “…I’m wondering whether or not he spoke to his family about events of that evening. More freely, I mean, than he did in his evidence before the coroner.”

  “No, he didn’t, Inspector. As a matter of fact, the whole business seemed to get thoroughly on his nerves. He used to go off at the deep-end if any of us mentioned it at home.”

  “It made a deep impression on him, then?”

  “Yes. In fact, he was never the same again after it. It struck us all that he got it into his head, that if he’d ordered the pair of them off the moor, the crime would never have been committed.”

  “Strange, wasn’t it, Mr. Buller?”

  “Yes. After the inquest, he had a sort of breakdown for a time. Got morose and…and…well, he started drinking. I’m sure it shortened his life.”

  “He was working for Sir Caleb Haythornthwaite at the time?”

  “Yes. Not that he cared for the job. He’d been with the Myles family all his life, until the old lady sold-up, and naturally, at his age, he couldn’t take-on another job. He didn’t take kindly to changing bosses, I can tell you.”

  “Did he go back to his job as gamekeeper after his breakdown?”

  “On and off. He carried on for two more seasons, and then his health began to fail. So he retired and went to live with my married sister.”

  “He’d enough to retire on, then?”

  “No. Mrs. Myles granted him a small pension, though how she managed it in her straitened circumstances, I don’t know. But that family were always good to their servants. Haythornthwaite ought to have been the man to look after him, as his last employer, but Sir Caleb hadn’t got it in him to be generous.”