The Case of the Headless Jesuit Page 13

  “What about him?”

  “I was a bit neighbourly with Mr. Salter. Quite a gentleman, he was, who’d a bit of money of his own, if you ask me. I used to go up now and then to borrow a drop of milk or, maybe, a bob for the gasmeter.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “Well, one day I went up and there he was with the whole place spread about with books and papers and him puzzling over them like somebody solving a crossword puzzle. I asks him what he’s at. At first, he didn’t want to say. But he was always a lonely chap and, when all’s said and done, one has to talk to somebody. He opened out a bit to me.”

  “What did he tell you?”

  “It seems he was in love with a girl at the place you mentioned … what was it called …? I forget.”

  “Cobbold?”

  “That’s it. Known her from being kids. But there was a snag to it. She was related to him. How near he didn’t know. He wanted to find out. Her mother was a queer one, it seems, and wouldn’t tell him. All she said was it couldn’t be. He’d have run away with the girl, he said, and risked it, but her mother was sick and she’d nobody else. The girl wouldn’t. He said her father had disappeared. All this came out last autumn. He hadn’t asked the girl to marry him since then, and when he did and her mother knew, she had a fit. Mr. Salter was workin’ to trace if she was really a relative or not.”

  “It’s a funny business to me. Surely, someone else would know.”

  “That was just it. The secret, if she was his relation, was so well kept he didn’t know where to start. That’s where Barney came in.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I told Mr. Salter about him. He’d started as a private detective after … after …”

  “After he came out?”

  “Yes, seeing that you know. He’d been jugged, but said he’d make a clean start.… However, forget it.… Like a drink?”

  “No, thanks, get on with what you were saying and drink after.”

  “I told him about Barney and said maybe he could trace the girl’s father. So Mr. Salter set him on it. He told me he’d come to a dead end. Meantime, Mr. Salter had drawn up a list of people who might know somethin’ and went off to Cobbold. He got killed.”

  “I see. What took Barney up to Cobbold after his death?”

  “I don’t know.…”

  “Come on, now. That’s not all. What did you take from Salter’s room after he’d gone? And give to Barney? What about the Headless Jesuit and the Salter Treasure …?”

  The girl got up and took a drink … a good one.

  “No stalling. I want to know.”

  “You seem to know all about it.”

  “You hunted through Salter’s papers with Barney and took out some of them, didn’t you, and Barney got killed trying to find out more about them?”

  “I may as well tell you the rest. Though you won’t think any the worse of Barney for it, will you? I’ll take what’s comin’ to me.… But Barney …”

  The drink was working and tears were again in the offing.

  “Well … Barney told Mr. Salter he’d come up against a stone wall. Mr. Salter said, like as not, the girl’s father might have gone back to Cobbold to squeeze his wife. Maybe, he said, he was somewhere in the Hall. There were plenty of secret places to hide in and make yourself comfortable in. With that, he told Barney to cry-off.”

  “Well?”

  “When Barney had gone, I went up for something. I forget what. But I asked about the Hall. Mr. Salter was quite talkative. Told me about the hiding-places, one of which had never been found. Said to contain a treasure. Thousands of pounds.… It was all there in his family papers. He recited a bit of poetry about it from a paper he had. Said that was supposed to be the key to it.”

  “Then, what?”

  “Well.… Then he went off and got himself killed. I told Barney about the treasure. At first, he laughed. Then, after Mr. Salter’s murder, he got serious. He said that was why he’d been killed. Somebody else was after it. I made an excuse to old Bedford and got the key of Salter’s flat and me and Barney went through the papers. There wasn’t much to go on. Just a plan of the Hall and that rhyme business. Barney took them and said he’d have a look into it. Then he got killed as well. You see, after Inspector Littlejohn called to see me and Barney, he felt there wasn’t much time left if he was going to find the money. That hurried him on and he got killed for it.”

  “And that’s all you know?”

  “What else is there? Only that I hope you get who ever did for Barney and that he swings for it.…”

  Meanwhile at the Vicarage, Cobbold, Littlejohn, too, was having a difficult time.

  The Rev. Penderell Worsnip, M.A., was a distinguished scholar. His work in life, apart from his duties as a priest, was the compiling of a huge Biblical Concordance which would put even Cruden to shame. At the time of the Inspector’s visit, Mr. Worsnip had just finished the letter “H” and, as he was seventy-seven years of age, things were getting a bit pressing if he wished to finish his task this side of the grave. He’d already been at it for forty years! The vicar’s housekeeper lead Littlejohn into the study, which was the scene of the utmost commotion and confusion.

  Mr. Worsnip’s desk had long been too small to accommodate or even hold in piles on the top, the immense mass of information he had accumulated. It was, therefore, spread out all over the floor. It looked like a rummage sale. Every bit of the carpet was covered with papers and books, except for paths, left between heaps of welter to allow the vicar to tread and sit comfortably among it. As he worked, he carried a little stool on which he sat deep in research and perusal, jotting down facts and details in pencil and then toddling to his desk to add them in ink to the enormous manuscript reposing there like the Lamb’s Book of Life, dog-eared, but pregnant with so much truth.

  This morning, the vicar was very excited. He hadn’t been able to eat, sleep or drink for eagerness and exaltation. To-day he was beginning the letter “I”. The most important chapter of all, for did it not contain “I” itself, and “I AM”, and “IAH” and—yes, he must include that, too—“Ierusalem”. At least ten years’ work, judging from the past progress he’d made. He hoped he’d be spared to finish it all. If not, maybe Mr. Smythe would.… With this, the housekeeper announced Littlejohn. The vicar lifted his tousled white head and gentle, kindly face from the Cruden he was perusing. After all, you can’t do without Cruden in a case like this, can you …? He raised his blue childlike eyes from the written page and gathered his thoughts from far away. “In the beginning, I AM,” he muttered.

  “Can you get in, Inspector? Take the chair by the desk. I must apologize for the state this room’s in. My own fault. I never allow anyone but myself to clean it.… But I’m taking your time. What can I do for you?”

  “I’m sorry to disturb you, but I wanted your help in the case I’m on. The Salter murder, you know, sir. In fact, three murders to be exact.”

  “Of course. The murders of Salter, Pennyquick and Smythe. Yes, yes.…”

  “No, no. You’ve got the victims wrong, sir. Salter, Plucock and Cooney, alias Faircluff.”

  “I beg pardon.… Yes.… My thoughts are wandering. Pray, what do you want of me? I’m busy on my work, you know. To-day I start on ‘I’ in my concordance. Very important letter, I assure you. Full of mystic and significant connotations. And so recurrent in the text. Look …”

  And he picked up a large Bible in which, with infinite care and patience he had ringed in red every occurrence of the letter in the text.

  Littlejohn couldn’t help thinking that although some might think the whole business a wild-goose chase, if everybody had something so harmless, occupying, and, maybe, useful in its way, to keep them busy and even dedicated to it, there might be less mischief in the world.

  “I called to ask you, sir, if during Mr. Granville Salter’s stay in the village immediately prior to his death, he called on you.”

  The blue eyes lost some of their innoc
ence, and fear slowly dawned in them. The vicar shuffled a pile of papers and, gathering a number of Bibles lying on the floor together, started to stack them in a neat heap.

  “He did,” he said guardedly.

  “May I ask what he wanted to know?”

  The vicar wrung his hands.

  “No, no, no,” he said appealingly. “Not again, please. Not again, sir.”

  “He called to ask, did he not, about the parentage of Miss Alveston?”

  “Yes, he did. He had no right to. I am a priest and much of my knowledge is sacred. I have no right to divulge it, and I told Mr. Granville so.”

  “You know the answer to the question then, sir?”

  “You have no right to ask me. Nothing shall drag information about that matter from me. It came to me under the seal of confidence and I shall not speak of it. I would rather go to prison … rather die. So, Inspector, I’m sorry I cannot help. I could not help Mr. Granville, much as I would have liked to do so.”

  “Very well, sir. I have no means of forcing you to talk.…”

  “I am glad you take that attitude, Inspector. Besides, poor Mr. Salter is dead, now, and the information is past doing him any good.”

  “Yes; but it may bring a murderer to justice if divulged. I ask you again, sir.…”

  “No, no, no. Please do not tempt me. I have been terribly worried about it and, after wrestling with the problem for long, I have decided that I must not speak.”

  “There is another matter, too, Mr. Worsnip.…”

  The vicar sat on his stool like an aged penitent, full of apprehension. Through the window the gravedigger, Tom Sly, arrived with pick and shovel and, after removing the headstone of a grave, began to dig slowly and rhythmically, pausing now and then to spit on his hands and mutter against the difficulty of his task.

  “Do you remember, sir, the night you called on P.C. Plucock for a character for your new kitchen maid and he brought you home?”

  “I do. I was not well at the time and, as I sat in the constable’s cottage, a strange fever came upon me. I grew light-headed and almost delirious and he had to see me home. It was a difficult journey, Inspector, I assure you.”

  “What did you talk about on the way, sir?”

  “I do not recollect. As I said, I was a little delirious. I dimly remember Plucock … poor Plucock, a good fellow … bringing me in here. We must have been talking, for as the warmth of the fire revived and refreshed me, I showed him some old Salter papers of which I must have been telling him on the way. I wasn’t aware I’d spoken of them or that the poor fellow was interested in such records, but he was apparently very keen on such things. I lent him the manuscripts and he returned them a day or so later. I expect when he came to peruse them he found them very dry.”

  “You must have been telling him on the way home about the Salter Treasure and the legend of the Headless Jesuit, sir, for after that, his wife says he couldn’t get the ideas out of his mind. In fact, they may have had something to do with his death.”

  The vicar was most distressed. He rose to his feet and paced feebly along the little paths which cut through all the raw materials of his Concordance.

  “Oh, dear. Oh, dear. I am so sorry. Those legends have been a great source of evil in this parish ever since they started to circulate. For generations, men have plotted and schemed and hunted for gold through them, as if, somehow, they forced the fascination of evil upon them.”

  “The jingle or doggerel about the Headless Jesuit certainly puzzled Plucock. Are you an antiquary, sir?”

  “I once was, but my work on my book now takes all my time. I was once President of the Thorncastle Society of Antiquaries, which has concerned itself very actively with the Salter family, its history and legends, but, as I couldn’t conscientiously fill my office with all this to do, I resigned. It is now in the hands of a very good man. Mr. Polydore, of Thorncastle, now holds it.”

  “Not Mr. Qualtrough, then?”

  “Oh dear, no. Far too fussy and erratic, although quite a scholar in his way. Does a lot of digging and investigating here and there. He and Mr. Polydore are not on speaking terms. They are rivals and each thinks the other is no good.”

  Littlejohn bade the good man good-bye and almost before he had crossed the threshold on his way out, Mr. Worsnip was back again to his studies, busily talking in undertones about “I” and all that it implied.

  Tom Sly was half-way down the new grave when Littlejohn passed.

  “Good day to you,” said Littlejohn. “Is it cold down there?”

  “Haffernoon to ’ee. No, it bain’t cold; I be as warm as a toast.”

  “Did Mr. Salter call here to see you just before he died?”

  “Ar, he did that. But not ’ere. Oi was a-digging in owld Fothergill’s garden when ’e up and stopped me wi’ his quizzin’.”

  “What did he want to know?”

  The old man bared his toothless gums and spat in the hole.

  “Nothin’ as oi would be answerin’. Secret, it was, and nothin’ makes me tell. Paid to keep moi mouth shut, oi was. And shut oi’ll keep it.”

  “Was it about who were Phyllis Alveston’s parents?”

  The old man’s jaw dropped and he leant on the handle of his spade.

  “’Ow do you know, and if you know, why be aaskin’ me?”

  “And what did you tell him?”

  “Nowt. Same as oi’m tellin’ yew.”

  “This is a police job, you know, Tom. Better tell me here than in court.”

  “Oi care for no courts. They won’t make me tell eether.” He didn’t care, it was true, for he appeared regularly before the local magistrates for being drunk and disorderly and was fined five shillings, which the vicar paid, for there wasn’t anyone to beat Tom at gravedigging in the county.

  “Very well, Sly. We’ll see about that later. You know, of course, that your obstinacy might very well cause the murderer who’s at large to escape …?”

  “That it won’t, and don’t yew be tryin’ anythin’ like that. Don’t you dare tell it about in village, else oi’ll be in trouble with they women. Terrible lot they be, those women. ALL women be terrible. Glad I bain’t married, though not for want of they women troyin’.”

  “I won’t promise anything. You’re definitely against the law by the way you’re acting. What the law-abiding people do to you’s no concern of mine.”

  “But oi bam’t in any way mixed up in these ’ere murders. ’Ow could a babby buried thirty year gone be to do with killin’s now?”

  “So that’s it. A baby buried thirty years since. Secretly, I guess.”

  “Aye. But don’t yew go tellin’. Vicar’ll send me to ’ell if ’e gets to know. Us was paid proper to bury ’im with all the proper rites of Holy Church and to keep us mouths shut. Don’t yew be tellin’.”

  Tom Sly slowly climbed from the grave and clutched Littlejohn with his clay-browned fingers.

  “Don’t yew be tellin’.… Else oi’ll …”

  “Else you’ll what?”

  “Nothin’.… Oi’ve said enough. Oi’m off.”

  He scraped his heavy shoes on the grass, shouldered his tools, and made off to the local to drown his indiscretions.

  TWELVE

  MEDICAL HISTORIES

  THE landlord of the “Royal Oak” had been a brewers’ drayman before being promoted by his employers to tenant of one of their tied houses, and he was an expert on horses, horse-drawn vehicles, beer, and the nandling of barrels. He was stocky, bald and side-whiskered, and talked in horsey language, just as an ex-sailor might, in retirement, still speak in the jargon of the sea.

  “Whoa, sir,” he shouted after Littlejohn as the Inspector entered the inn and climbed the steep stairs up to his room. He had just tapped a cask of beer and was busy raising its contents in the pumps at the bar and testing the result at the same time. His buxom wife stood between Mr. Ashberry and the door.

  “Stan’ o’er,” he said to his missus, who made way for him t
o join Littlejohn. He removed the queer, tall bowler he always wore when out and about the place. “Young feller called with this note from Miss Fothergill. Said it was urgent.…”

  “Roast beef, Yorkshire puddin’, roast and b’iled potaties an’ sprouts for your dinner,” said the landlady, just by way of greeting the Inspector and assuring him of her careful attentions. “Treacle puddin’ to foller.…”

  “Whoa, missus.… Whoa, there. K … ymeeee …” said her husband, tugging at imaginary reins to silence her. “The hinspector’s too busy …”

  “That sounds good, Mrs. Ashberry,” said Littlejohn, reading his note. Miss Fothergill said she had news and would like to see him as soon as he could call on her.

  “I’ll be back in time for your excellent meal, Mrs. Ashberry. I’m just off again for a bit.…”

  The landlady bobbed a real, old-fashioned curtsy.

  “Don’t let it spile, sir,” she said.

  “Stiddy, stiddy, Mrs. Hashberry,” said her husband to command her silence and respect.

  The owner of Fothergill’s was playing twelve-note pieces again when the maid admitted the Inspector.

  “The pianner-tuners is not in,” she said cuttingly and went off to announce him.

  Miss Fothergill rose to meet him. She was still smoking and was dressed in a cream jumper with a tweed skirt. The former was covered in a pattern of blue hieroglyphics which dazzled you if you looked too long at it; the latter looked as if she’d woven and cut it herself.

  “I’m glad you’ve called, Inspector. I’m off to London to-morrow and want to get this matter over before I go. I’m playing at a concert.… I’ve news for you. Lots of it. Sit down.…”

  Littlejohn lowered himself in an arm-chair, the springs of which seemed ready to fly through the material of the seat and on which he had to shuffle himself to and fro to keep safe and comfortable.

  “You uncomfortable? Take this and sit on it!”

  Miss Fothergill flung a cushion of brick-coloured material embroidered in blue. The pattern represented a distorted human face with a huge eye in the middle of the forehead.