The Case of the Headless Jesuit Page 16

Having written this, I shall remove the head of the figure, place it inside and have Hosegood make safe the head on the body again.

  Then, I regret to say, as Hosegood knows too much, I must silence him. He is not so faithful as would appear and has poached other things of mine than game. A barrel of shots for the poacher.

  Simister Saltaire.

  This 27th day of February, 1824.

  “Well?” said Mr. Polydore.

  “We’d best get to the Hall at once. There may be more in this than a skeleton or two and a dead man’s hate.”

  “You mean the Treasure.”

  “No. He’d have had that if there were any. Let’s go. My car’s outside.”

  At the Hall the police patrol was active and Pennyquick had joined them in his excitement. They greeted Littlejohn gladly. They were all bored.

  “Nothing’s happened,” said the sergeant-in-charge, a huge beefy fellow called Dainty. “Only Mr. Qualtrough called. Said he’d heard of our bein’ here and, actin’ as Coroner, came to see what was ’appenin’. He’s somewhere about the grounds with that chap Whatmough.”

  The sun was shining through the huge leaded window which lighted the great panelled hall of the house, from which heavy doors to left and to right gave access to the entertaining rooms. To the left of the main staircase, the way led to the servants’ quarters. The place was bare and forsaken. The furniture had been removed and, although the caretaker had kept the rooms moderately free from dust, an empty smell pervaded it all, dust, damp and hidden decay.

  Someone had erected a large trestle table, probably looted from a potting-shed, and round it were a number of empty boxes, two tumble-down chairs and a kitchen stool. The policemen’s bivouac. On the table a number of dirty cups, a vacuum flask, empty sandwich packets, a carrier bag, a fibre case and, majestic in their midst, a constable’s helmet.

  Littlejohn strolled from room to room. Here and there a few useless oddments left by the previous tenants, but everywhere the melancholy traces of slow deterioration. The house was dying from lack of money, like a great plant from which the water supply had been removed.

  “Well, shall we try?” said Littlejohn at length to Mr. Polydore. The gaunt antiquary was impatiently waiting, now and then pausing to examine some odds and ends of carving or a chimney-piece which took his fancy. Given his own way, he would have set about taking the valuable pieces away at top speed. He knew of good markets for them, especially among American connoisseurs. He was not prompted by greed alone; he felt he wanted as much of this old and gracious beauty to fall into appreciative and capable hands as possible before it crumbled or rotted away.

  Littlejohn called Pennyquick and Sergeant Dainty to him and slowly climbed the staircase. Of enormous weight and built in what seemed indestructible oak, it had shallow, easy steps, which rose gently, then, turning twice abruptly, gave on to a gallery which surrounded three sides of the hall, and ended in a platform for minstrels.

  One, two, three … eleven.

  The Inspector stopped and examined the fine, fluted panels which covered the whole wall of the staircase. Once they had shone from the wax and polishing of generations of proud servants; now the bloom had left them and the wood, unprotected, was gradually pitting from the boring of wood-worms.

  At the eleventh stair, Littlejohn halted, closely followed by Polydore, who, with burning eyes and twitching fingers seemed eager enough to test his theory and even brush the Inspector aside.

  “Here!” he said, pointing to the third panel from the stair in an upward direction. He tapped it with a long, tobacco-stained index and looked all ready to tear the whole lot down in impatience.

  Littlejohn examined the panel. Someone had been there already! It was covered in a mass of fingerprints. He turned to Pennyquick.

  “Has anyone been tinkering around here?”

  “No, sir. Must ’ave been done before we came.”

  The Inspector felt round the edge of the panel, but there seemed no trace of catch or spring.

  “Let me vee.…”

  Mr. Polydore could contain himself no longer and lapsed into strange tongues. He pushed his companion aside and feverishly began himself to explore the woodwork. Taking out a penknife, he prodded the corner. Then, suddenly, the whole fell away, revealing, as the document had said, a door handle and a large keyhole. But there was no key in the indicated place.

  Littlejohn scrutinized the opening.

  “Someone has been here, I’m sure.…”

  “Yev,” said Mr. Polydore. “De vwine!!”

  He regarded it as his own preserve and his thoughts were turning to his deadly antiquarian rival, Mr. Qualtrough.

  “He’v veen at it! No key.… It ivn’t here. He’v daken izh. Ahhhhh!”

  He made gnashing noises.

  Littlejohn seized the handle and tugged. Slowly and easily a whole bunch of panels opened outwards, bringing with them a thin iron door and revealing beyond, a dark cavern.

  “Got your torch with you, Pennyquick?”

  “Eh? Oh yes, yes, sir.”

  Poor Pennyquick’s eyes were almost popping from his head and Sergeant Dainty had recoiled in surprise against the heavy carved banisters.

  Mr. Polydore was performing a grotesque dance with glee and making little whining noises of pleasure.

  “A lamp … a lamp …”

  Dainty scuttered downstairs with astonishing agility, rummaged in the fibre case on the table, and produced a large police lamp. He switched on the light and by its glaring beams they found their way into the hidden room, the priest’s hole. It was damp and musty, but somehow ventilated, for the air was dank but tolerable. The whole place was of brick, except the floor, which was of solid stone slabs. At one end stood a stone erection which might have been an altar at one time. But they weren’t interested in the structure of the place. On the floor lay the body of a thick-set, powerful man. He was face-downwards and the back of his head had been beaten in like an eggshell. His arms were sprawled ahead of him and his heavy shoes were balanced on their toes.

  Dainty knelt and turned over the body.

  “Alveston!!” almost screamed Pennyquick. “Godelpus.…”

  He was wearing a sailor’s jersey under a reefer jacket, and his features were horrible in death and dirty from lack of proper washing.

  The men shivered. The air was as cold as ice and smelled of damp stone and earth.

  “My God! My God! Oh, my God!” whimpered Mr. Polydore. “Zhiz will be zhe death of me.…”

  “That will do!” said Littlejohn and shook him vigorously by the arm.

  The antiquary mounted the three stone steps to the door. He clawed the air as though trying to climb an invisible ladder. “I need air …” they understood him to say before he lapsed into incoherence again.

  They flashed the lamp around. On the floor in one corner, as though swept away with a brush or someone’s foot, lay a mass of bones. A human skeleton. The pitiable remains of the unfortunate Bacon, the victim of the malicious Simister Salter.

  Littlejohn knelt by the corpse and felt the hands.

  “He’s not been dead very long. A matter of a day or so, I’d guess. Better get the doctor along, will you, Dainty, please? And let Superintendent Percival know, as well. Is there a phone handy?”

  “At an ’ouse a little way up the road, sir. I’ll go on my bike.”

  There was no trace of any treasure. Naturally, if Simister had known of the hole he’d have moved it long ago. Pennyquick, who had silently followed Mr. Polydore outside, now returned with some old curtains torn from one of the windows, and with these he covered the heap of bones in the corner.

  “Who can ’e be, sir?”

  “I’ll tell you later. Don’t cover Alveston till I’ve felt his pockets.”

  Gingerly Littlejohn proceeded with his task. He brought to light the usual oddments a tramping man carries around. A large clasp knife, identity papers which confirmed that it was Alveston, although they were in the name of Grigg. Som
e bars of chocolate, a ration-book, string, a tin-opener, some keys, a pipe, tobacco in a skin pouch, a huge petrol lighter and some matches.

  Finally the hip pocket. Pennyquick, a silent spectator, drew a harsh breath, for out came two fatal objects.

  The leather sheath of a knife, roughly the size of the weapon used on Granville Salter, and, more ominous still, a policeman’s truncheon.

  “Plucock’s! They must ’ave fought and Alveston tuck Plucock’s truncheon and used it on ’im.… The rotten swine.… The dirty rotten swine. Then, he crept up the dyke which passes the garden ’ere and tuck him to the marsh and left ’im to drown in shallow water.… There’s ’ardly any water in that dyke, since they made the new cut. He’d get along without being seen.”

  “So, Plucock came here. He must have been hunting around and come upon Alveston.”

  Pennyquick shone his lamp on the floor.

  “In ’ere,” he said. “He must ’ave had it open. Here’s a tunic button.…”

  He picked up the tarnished object and thrust it in Littlejohn’s palm.

  “Poor old Plucock.… He …”

  Suddenly there was a great commotion outside. A sound of pattering feet and voices raised in shrill vituperation.

  “So! You thought you’d steal a march on me. Cheat! Sneak! You … you …”

  It was Mr. Qualtrough, returned from reconnaissance with his henchman, Whatmough. Their figures loomed and bobbed about like a shadow-show in the doorway.

  “I found it first! I found it first! That had you, didn’t it?”

  Mr. Polydore executed a little dance of triumph.

  “In the King’s Name! As Coroner, I hereby claim and impound the treasure.… In the name of His Majesty.…”

  “Treasure! He, he, he,” rollicked Mr. Polydore. “Too late!! Ish all gone.…” He was thoroughly enjoying the discomfiture of his enemy. “Ho, ho, ho. He sezh treazha.…”

  “Be quiet out there,” called Littlejohn. But the protagonists were too busy to bother. They were hotly abusing each other, snapping their fingers in each other’s faces, squaring like gamecocks.

  “Juzht in time to be too late! Pettifoggin liddle Coroner,” gloated Mr. Polydore, casting up strange sounds and unknown words.

  All the pent-up rage and rivalry of half a lifetime boiled up in the breast of the faithful Whatmough. He pushed aside his master, seized Mr. Polydore roughly by the lapels of his dusty morning coat, and shook him venomously until his false teeth fell out.

  “You … you … you … Grrrrrrr …” Whatmough choked.

  The combatants, their long legs entwined like serpents, their hands pushing and clawing at each other’s faces and hair, tottered wildly for a moment on the upper edge of the three steps and then, losing their balance, they fell with wild cries headlong into the priest’s hole. There, still snarling, spitting and scratching like a pair of Kilkenny cats, they continued flailing at each other and, as they both yelled in high-pitched abracadabra, they rubbed one another’s noses in the dust of untold years.

  FOURTEEN

  THE DISGUSTED DOCTOR

  WHEN Dr. Macduff took up practice in Cobbold following the death of Dr. Fothergill, he had a rich sense of humour. He laughed at the queer country characters who visited his surgery and called him to their homes; he laughed at the strange set-up of local government, officials, committees and conferences prevailing in the county; he even laughed when he discovered that his professional rival, a successful practitioner who lived between Cobbold and Thorncastle, boasted the name of Macbeth. With the passage of time, however, the fun and spice of life grew thin. And nationalization was the last straw!

  Littlejohn had sent Cromwell to ask Dr. Macduff if Mrs. Alveston, who was his patient, could safely be questioned to the full extent about what she knew of Granville Salter, her late husband’s movements prior to his death, and anything else relative to the case. The good woman, in a perpetual state of ill-health, due, Littlejohn thought, to nerves alone, was in the habit of dissolving into tears and becoming convulsed with a form of palsy whenever faced with problems or decisions which she didn’t want to be mixed up in. Before pressing hard this most important witness, Littlejohn wished to be sure from her doctor that no ill effects would result. He didn’t want to kill her with fright or drive her out of her mind!

  Dr. Macduff’s plate announced evening surgery at 6.30. At 6.45 Cromwell rang the bell of the annexe marked “Surgery” and ornamented with a red lamp over the door. The lamp hadn’t been illuminated since Dr. Macduff had been nationalized. He no longer needed to guide or invite patients. They just came. And in dozens.…

  A bad-tempered elderly housekeeper opened the door.

  “Can’t you read?” she said, and pointed to a card stuck on the glass with gelatine lozenges. “Come in.”

  Cromwell offered the dragon his card, but she ignored it.

  “I want to see the doctor on a private matter. I’m from the police.”

  The old lady was unmoved.

  “Nobody’s favoured now. All treated alike. First come, first served.”

  Cromwell entered and gingerly took a seat among the twenty or so patients waiting for the doctor. When a bell rang, the next walked into the consulting room. The sergeant looked round. Some obvious habituals, intent on getting all they could for nothing. Two or three patients in bandages; a child with whooping cough, whose mother during paroxysms called the attention of the rest there with great pride as the way he went black in the face. Another little boy with a frightful squint and a girl with a red tape tied round her sleeve to indicate she’d recently been vaccinated. She showed her decoration to Cromwell who gave her a threepenny bit for being a brave girl.

  The bell kept tinkling and the sufferers went in and out of the private room with lightning rapidity. Inside sat the doctor, brooding at his desk. He was elderly, tall and portly. Once he’d been a rugby player and now the muscle had turned to fat. No time to get it back again to firm flesh by golf. All his time was taken up rushing about the countryside giving people free treatment. He scratched his bald head irritably, doodled on his blotter with his pencil, and looked biliously at the stacks of official forms lying all over the desk. Prescriptions, priorities, death certificates, optical chits, forms for free wigs and corsets, dockets for special cases, orders for artificial limbs. Once, he’d had high ideals about healing the sick. A few at a time, of course, and leisure in which to study their cases. Now … He pressed the bell angrily.

  Footsteps and the closing of the door.

  “Doctor, I’m not feeling well.…”

  Macduff didn’t even look up. He knew who it was. Joe Bartie, drunk as a pig last night, with the allowances granted by his grateful government for his eight children, now getting himself in form for another bout at the country’s expense. The doctor drew a pad towards him.

  R. Pil. rhoei co. gr. iv.,

  or should he give something more drastic to knock the old toper out for a day or two …?

  “Right.… Next.…”

  A man for spectacles. He couldn’t read but wanted to see the pictures and comic strips in the daily paper. They were all blurred. Green chit for the optician.

  A totally bald man who’d been so for years. Now his daughter was getting married. He thought a wig would add a bit of tone to the wedding. Could the doctor …? Next.

  “I must have eaten something, doctor.…”

  R. Ext. Cascarae Sag. liq.…

  Then Cromwell entered. The doctor continued writing.

  “Yes …”

  Cromwell wondered whether or not to get himself some glasses whilst he was at it. A pair with horn rims like Littlejohn’s.

  “Card, please.…”

  The doctor looked up.

  “Hullo. Who are you?”

  “Detective-Sergeant Cromwell, New Scotland Yard.”

  Cromwell produced his warrant card.

  “Ah.…”

  This was a change!

  “I’m here on the local murde
r case.”

  “Glad you called. But what can I do for you? Not sick, I hope.”

  “No, sir. I’ve called about Mrs. Alveston. Your patient, I believe.”

  “Yes. But I’m not divulging any details, you know. Whatever else has happened to us, there’s still etiquette left.”

  “To tell you the truth, doctor, we’re in a bit of a difficulty with that lady. She knows quite a lot about the case, but as soon as we broach the matter, she has tears and hysterics. We just don’t know what to do about it.”

  “Best thing to do, of course, would be to slap her face. I’m not being brutal or callous, though God knows these days I’ve enough damned provocation. But I’ll tell you frankly, Mrs. Alveston’s had a lot of trouble, but it’s been of her own making. She enjoys being ill, and, from what I can gather, her endless plaintiveness and querulousness drove her husband away. How her daughter’s stuck it all these years, I don’t know. She’s battened on that girl and, unless the girl’s firm, she’ll end up an old maid still looking after mother. I attend her twice a week. They say young Granville and Phyllis were in love and the old woman wouldn’t hear of it for some unearthly reason. The reason was as plain as the nose on your face. She wanted to keep her daughter to herself.…”

  “Is that so, sir?”

  “Yes.…”

  Outside you could hear the patients muttering impatiently and shuffling and walking about the waiting-room. Here was a stranger getting better attention.… It wasn’t good enough. A man with a cough and a weakness for aniseed mixture, gathered himself together and barked hoarsely in protest.

  “… If you take my advice, Sergeant, you’ll press your questions. If she weeps, let her. Carry on. If she had nervous convulsions, carry on. She’ll come-to. Let her tire before you. You’ll get your answers. Don’t say I told you, but there’s no danger. Her complaint now is simply a kind of flight from reality, she retreats into it rather than face her problems. That’s all I can say. Hope it works. And I wish I could have a pipe and a yarn with you. I’m fond of detective stories, when I get time to read ’em. Well, I must push you off. The waiting-room’s full, I guess.… You don’t happen to want a wig or corsets whilst you’re here? Only say the word.…”