Death in Desolation (An Inspector Littlejohn Mystery) Page 18

  The woman screamed this time at the top of her voice.

  ‘Joss has been killed!’

  Without another word the head above vanished and the window was slammed. A light went on in the room and was followed by one after another from other windows as the occupants awoke there. Finally, the general turmoil inside seemed to rouse the occupant of a tower erected at one end of the house and the light went on there, too, and joined the rest of the illuminations.

  The woman stood motionless and dazed. Now and then she whimpered in protest at the time the occupants were taking to appear.

  Suddenly the door opened and a shaft of light shot across the neat path to the large white gate and the forlorn figure of the woman waiting like a ghost near the house.

  Silhouetted in the doorway stood a fat, stocky, middle-aged man in pyjama top and trousers with his braces dangling behind him like a tail. He had close-cropped hair, a stubble of iron-grey beard, large ears and a strong short neck. He rubbed the sleep from his eyes.

  ‘Who is it?’

  ‘Isabel Varran from Close Dhoo. Joss has been killed.’

  The man grunted.

  The family at Close-e-Cass scarcely knew their nearest neighbours. The Varrans were reputed to be a queer lot and Isabel was regarded as being the oddest of them.

  ‘What did you say about Joss?’

  ‘He’s dead. Somebody killed him.’

  ‘Where is he?’

  ‘In the hedge opposite our house.’

  ‘Are you sure he’s dead?’

  Meanwhile other members of the family had gathered round the fat man. Three men, one of whom might have been his brother and the others his sons. Joseph Candell, the fat man, didn’t seem at all pleased by the disturbance and his involvement in it. He was a man of little initiative and hesitated about his next move. Meanwhile, the dog began to bark again. It gave him a chance to vent his feelings and he ran to the kennel and kicked the dog, which ran yelping for shelter.

  A bell, dangling from a spring on the wall of the hall began to jangle. It was from the occupant of the strange tower, who rarely left it, and called for attention by the home-made alarm.

  An elderly woman appeared, her grey hair in rollers, with a coat over her nightdress.

  ‘What’s going on here? Grandfather’s getting up.’

  ‘Go and tell him to keep out of this and be quiet.’

  The woman, Candell’s wife, didn’t seem to hear but passed him and went to the solitary figure waiting in the dark for the next move.

  ‘What is it, Isabel?’

  At the sound of the gentle voice of the older woman, the younger one suddenly burst into noisy weeping.

  ‘Joss is dead . . .’

  ‘Come indoors out of the cold.’

  She laid her hand on Isabel’s shoulder and led her inside. As she passed the group of men she turned on them.

  ‘Well, what are you lot waiting for? Get along with you to Close Dhoo and see what’s been happening there. I’ll make some tea for her. She can wait here.’

  A figure then appeared on the landing of the wide staircase. A fierce-looking old man with a flurry of shaggy white hair, tall and stooping, dressed in a calf-length white nightshirt. It was old Junius Candell, aged about ninety, who years ago had surrendered the running of the farm and a small share of the capital and profits to his eldest son and retired to a tower which he had built on the end of the house. He spent most of his time there watching all that went on in all the fields and buildings.

  ‘What’s the hullaballo about? Nobody tells me anything.’

  Old Junius waved his stick in the air. It had, in days past, been laid so often across his son’s back, that the fat man at the door made an instinctive gesture with his left arm as though to ward off a blow.

  The last arrival on the stairs was the fat man’s daughter. She was dressed in a negligée, bought from a mail order firm and certified ‘as worn by famous actresses’. She was pretty and had slant eyes, which made her father sometimes doubt his paternity and jealously dream-up affairs long gone between his wife and proprietors of Chinese restaurants, which seemed to be the only places on the Isle of Man which harboured orientals.

  Mrs. Candell appeared to be the only person with any initiative. She turned on the two younger men.

  ‘Get back to your room and get dressed. Somebody will have to go down to Close Dhoo and see what this is about.’

  Then she addressed the slant-eyed girl, who was leaning against the wall half-way up the stairs, breathing on her finger nails and rubbing them on the sleeve of her peignoir, as the advertisement had called it.

  ‘And you, Beulah, have you nothing better to do? See your grandfather back to his room. He’ll be getting his death of cold. Tell him to get in bed.’

  The old man gave the girl a toothless grin as she approached him. She was obviously the apple of his eye.

  ‘Come on, granda. She says you’re to get back to bed.’

  ‘Eh?’

  He was a bit deaf. She led him away.

  The clock in the hall struck midnight. The men, who had scattered when Mrs. Candell told them to go and dress now gathered again at the door. The two sons, tall, heavy, slow moving, looked to their father for his orders. The fat man seemed to realise at last that they had better do something quickly, put on his cap and took a large stick from a collection of many generations in an umbrella stand near the front door.

  ‘We’d better three of us go. Uncle Tom, stay with the women. We don’t know who’s prowling about. If what the Varran girl says is true, we ought to get the police . . .’

  The younger of the sons, in his early twenties, with a beatnik haircut and sideboards, giggled nervously.

  ‘We ought to be sure she’s tellin’ the truth, oughtn’t we? If Bella Varran has imagined it all, we’ll look daft when the police get here and find it’s nothing but a hoax . . .’

  ‘You shut up! If we leave a dead man lying in the ditch all night, we’ll be in proper trouble.’

  The older son, a smiling, naïve, good-tempered giant, thought he ought to say a word.

  ‘Had I better take me gun?’

  The fat man was out of patience with the whole business and wanted to get back to bed.

  ‘What the hell would we want with a gun? Whoever’s done this, if it has been done, will be miles off by now. Let’s get goin’. Bring the big flashlamp . . .’

  The fat man walked very fast and with the assurance of one who knew every step of the way. The air was still and cold and the quick clatter of the men’s hobnailed boots against the loose flints of the track made them sound like a group of horses. At first, nobody spoke. The fat man breathed asthmatically through his mouth. He was still half-drunk with sleep and grumbling to himself about the ruin of his night’s rest. The youngest son was talking quietly, pursuing his original train of thought.

  ‘A lot of fine fools we’ll look if . . .’

  ‘Shut up and save your breath!’

  Nobody knew what Joseph Candell was thinking about. Nobody ever did. He was a lumbering, slow thinking man who spoke little, had difficulty in expressing himself and grew irritable when he could not do so. Now, the pace was too fast for him. He began to wonder why he was hurrying and slackened his steps. His sons followed suit and the younger one paused to light a cigarette. They had reached the long twisting path which led to Close Dhoo and left behind the tunnel of trees which had once been planted as a part of the scheme when the great trench was dug to drain the marshes. As they reached the wider track, above which the stars were now visible, the sky seemed to pale in the direction of Ballaugh, giving an illusion that dawn was near.

  A light shone out from a solitary cottage ahead of them.

  ‘There’s Close Dhoo. She must have left the light on.’

  Nobody answered, but they all thought alike. Descended from a race of peasants, all waste was abhorrent to them. The three men reduced their pace, as though reluctant to face what was awaiting them. They felt like
intruders in a matter which did not concern them.

  The younger son, his hands in his pockets, had been whistling nervously between his teeth.

  ‘What do we do when we get there?’

  The fat man, faced with a decision, grew irritable, as usual.

  ‘What the hell do you think we’ll do? She said his body was in the ditch opposite the house. You and Baz can go and look for it. I’ll go and see what’s going on in the house.’

  They reached the house and paused irresolutely. In the silence they could hear water babbling somewhere.

  ‘Well? What are you two waiting for? Get on with it.’

  The two Candell boys obeyed. Their nailed boots clattered across the flints and then fell silent as they met the soft mould of the hedge. Their father strode boldly up the path of trodden earth to the front door. Before entering he peeped through the window at the side, but the curtains obscured all that was within. He hesitated before trying the door and looked back to where his sons had left him. He could not see them, but the noise of crackling twigs and the dancing light of the torch they were carrying indicated that they were vigorously tackling the job in hand.

  ‘Hey!’

  The shrill shout breaking the silence pulled them up. Their father hurried down the path and found them knee-deep in the ditch.

  ‘There’s no body here. I said she’d imagined it and we’d be made to look fools . . .’

  ‘Shut up! And what do you think you’re doing there? If you find the dead man and the police are brought in, there’ll be a hell of a row because you’ve trampled all over the place and spoiled the clues with your big feet . . .’

  ‘Fine fools we look . . .’

  ‘Shut up, I said. We ought never to have started searching for the body. And it’s me who is the fool turning the pair of you loose on the job. I might have known you’d mess it up.’

  He paused and blew through his mouth.

  ‘There’s only one thing for it. We’d better get the police. We can’t run the risk of interfering any more. It’s their responsibility. Put that light out and come back to the road . . .’

  The three of them scrambled out of the mud and peat of the ditch and stood in the road hesitantly.

  ‘It’s as near to the village as going back home to telephone. Baz, you’d better walk down and get the policeman. I’ve had enough of this. Somebody else had better take the responsibility. As it is, there’ll be trouble when they find how the pair of you have trampled all over the place.’

  ‘It’s a good half hour’s walk from here . . .’

  ‘Don’t argue with me. I’d send Joe, only he won’t be able to tell a proper tale. As it is, I’m sure you’ll make a mess of it, too. Just go and knock up Kincaid and tell him that Isabel Varran has come and told us that she’s found her brother Joss dead in the road, and he’d better come right away. Got that? Nothing else. Don’t start spinning a long yarn. I know what you’re like when you get talking. So watch your tongue if you don’t want trouble. Bring Kincaid here. We’ll wait in the house.’

  Baz was too bewildered even to argue and went off in the darkness. His hobnails rang on the road and gradually receded until there was silence again.

  ‘We’d better go in and wait. No sense in standing out here in the dark.’

  They crossed the road and down the path to the house. Candell was first and fumbled with the latch.

  ‘What the . . .?’

  He pushed open the door and in the shaft of light from the room looked at his podgy hand.

  It was covered in dark congealed blood.

  He hurried indoors and his son shambled after him.

  The room was as neat and tidy as Isabel Varran had left it. The table was covered with a red velvet cloth and in the middle stood a half-empty bottle of whisky without a cork.

  The centre of the stage, however, was occupied by a solitary figure slumped in an arm-chair before the dead fire. The head lay on one side in an attitude of great weariness and the arms dangled one each over the arms of the chair, the hands outstretched and the soiled broken fingernails almost touching the floor.

  The features were those of a man of middle age, lined and grubby, and with several days’ growth of beard. The square head, with its thatch of close-cropped iron-grey hair, was thrown back and the eyes were open and staring. He wore an old suit and soiled shirt without tie. The shirt front was soaked in whisky, the reek of which filled the room, as though someone had tried to revive him by forcing it between his teeth.

  The younger man stared wild-eyed at the body, his lips moving soundlessly. Then he ran out into the garden and his father could hear him retching.

  The older man approached the corpse, his fat arms ahead of him, like someone forcing his way through a thick hedge. He touched the cold forehead with the flat of his hand, uttered a noise like a sob and then, with a quick gesture, closed the staring eyes with his forefinger and thumb. Then he ran to join his son outside.

  Half an hour later when Baz and the village constable arrived in the latter’s official car, they found the fat man and Joe sitting on the doorstep with the door locked behind them, staring into space.

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  George Bellairs was the pseudonym of Harold Blundell (1902-1985). He was, by day, a Manchester bank manager with close connections to the University of Manchester. He is often referred to as the English Simenon, as his detective stories combine wicked crimes and classic police procedurals, set in small British communities.

  He was born in Lancashire and married Gladys Mabel Roberts in 1930. He was a Francophile which explains why many of his titles took place in France. Bellairs travelled there many times, and often wrote articles for English newspapers and magazines, with news and views from France.

  After retiring from business, he moved with Gladys to Colby on the Isle of Man, where they had many friends and family. Some of his detective novels are set on the Isle of Man and his surviving notebooks attest to a keen interest in the history, geography and folklore of the island. In 1941 he wrote his first mystery story during spare moments at his air raid warden’s post. Throughout the 1950s he contributed a regular column to the Manchester Guardian under the pseudonym George Bellairs, and worked as a freelance writer for other newspapers both local and national.

  Blundell’s first mystery, Littlejohn on Leave (1941) introduced his series detective, Detective Inspector Thomas Littlejohn. His books are strong in characters and small communities – set in the 1940s to ‘70s. The books have strong plots, and are full of scandal and intrigue. His series character started as Inspector and later became Superintendent Thomas Littlejohn. Littlejohn, reminiscent of Inspector Maigret, is injected with humour, intelligence and compassion.

  He died on the Isle of Man in April 1982 just before his eightieth birthday after a protracted illness.

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  ALSO BY GEORGE BELLAIRS

  The Case of the Famished Parson

  The Case of the Demented Spiv

  Corpses in Enderby

  Death in High Provence

  Death Sends for the Doctor

  Murder Makes Mistakes

  Bones in the Wilderness

  Toll the Bell for Murder

  Death in the Fearful Night

  Death in the Wasteland

  Death of a Shadow

  Intruder in t
he Dark

  Death in Desolation

  The Night They Killed Joss Varran

  This edition published in 2016 by Ipso Books

  Ipso Books is a division of Peters Fraser + Dunlop Ltd

  Drury House, 34-43 Russell Street, London WC2B 5HA

  Copyright © George Bellairs, 1967

  All rights reserved

  You may not copy, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (including without limitation electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, printing, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

  Contents

  1The Farmhouse Crimes

  2A Round of Town

  3The Confidences of Harry Quill

  4Legal Opinion

  5The Rat Race

  6Stillwaters

  7Gathering of the Clan

  8Cromwell Among the Mourners

  9Quill’s Last Day

  10Treasure Hunt

  11Prosecution and Defence

  12Trial and Error

  13Order out of Confusion