Outrage on Gallows Hill Read online

  P.C. Butt was deeply disappointed. Unlike his unfilial brothers in the rest of England, he thought the world of his father. To him the old chap was a perfect oracle. He consulted him earnestly whenever he was in difficulties. For young Butt’s mind ground slow without the advantage of doing it exceeding small, whereas, on the other hand, that of his sire, in spite of his great age, was keen and active. Especially after one of his do’s. It was as though the rush of blood to the head lubricated his brains for some time afterwards.

  “I wanted a word with the ole man,” said Butt to his wife when he got downstairs again. “Wanted his advice badly. Young Free’s bin murdered to-night and Costain looks like makin’ all the runnin’ if I don’t do somethin’ quick. Always was lucky, was Costain …”

  “Murder? Ow!” said Mrs. Butt. She was a tall, stringy woman who resembled a horse. Long face, large, protruding teeth, loose, heavy jaw, cavernous nostrils and large, melting kindly eyes. The finishing touch would have been a straw bonnet with holes for her ears and tassels hanging over her brow …

  “Murder? Ow!” said Mrs. Butt, raising her hands and forearms like a Muezzin calling the faithful to prayer, and uttering little screams. It was a way she had of showing she was interested yet terrified and needing male protection.

  “Yes. I’ll tell yer about it in the mornin’, Cora. I’m asleep on me feet now … Been ’ard at it since ten o’clock. So let’s be getting up to bed.”

  Feeling keenly the honour Providence had done her in uniting her with such a man, the discoverer of murderers and punisher of wrong-doers, Mrs. Butt rapidly pulled out a number of hairpins and let down her hair, which was a sign that the curtain was being lowered on another day’s work.

  In the morning Nehemiah Butt was himself again and appeared at his son’s bedside at five minutes to six. After his do’s he always rose early and full of beans. Mrs. Butt had heard him extricating himself from among his various legacies at just after five o’clock, so had risen and greeted him with the news of the crime.

  Old Butt shook the sleeping form of his son.

  “Get up,” he shouted angrily. “Skulkin’ abed when murder’s afoot.”

  P.C. Butt, who had only had three hours’ sleep, did not respond at once. He was a sound sleeper, for in his childhood he had been brought up in a house adjoining the private zoo of an eccentric nobleman, who employed his father. Nurtured amid the nightly roars of hungry lions, the howls of tigers and other large cats, the chattering of monkeys and the shrieks of parrots and exotic birds, Will Butt had been rendered immune from anything humans might try in the way of disturbing his sleep. Nehemiah Butt’s voice, which resembled that of a furious old baboon, had no effect on his offspring, and he needed to seize his son by the throat and shake him before he could elicit any reaction.

  “Ow! Ow! Leggo … Oh, it’s you, is it?”

  At first, P.C. Butt thought the Ravelstone strangler was at it again.

  “Wot’s this about murder, me boy? Tell me all, from beginnin’ to end …”

  “Gimme a chance. I ’aven’t had me sleep out yet. Didn’t get in till three …”

  The constable’s hair was on end from the initial shock of being roughly roused and his curly moustache looked as though he had knitted it himself from black wool and stuck it on his upper lip awry.

  “Never mind that. While there’s a murderer at large you oughter neether slumber nor sleep. Festina Lente. That’s Latin for get a move on, an’ that oughter be yore motter for this case. Costain’ll get all the credit else.”

  The mention of his rival’s name was like a shock from an electric battery to P.C. Butt. He was up in one and drawing on his trousers before the old man could breathe again.

  “Yore always right, dad.”

  “Course I am. Semper Eadem. Latin for always right, that is.”

  Old Butt spent a lot of time learning the mottoes on the bits of china, presents from here, there and everywhere, and bearing the coats-of-arms of their places of origin, left to him in their Wills by his defunct sisters.

  In his haste to get his tunic, P.C. Butt pulled the clothes rack, plugged into the wall, clean from its moorings. His father had only made and fixed it a few days earlier.

  “Look wot you done now, clumsy duck,” chided his sire.

  Nehemiah was the handyman of the home. Always doing useful jobs about the place in record time. The whole of the downstairs sideboard had collapsed after his efforts at easing one of the castors, and the coal shed he had erected in the spring and painted bright green had disintegrated at the first breath of wind and thereafter looked like a piece of bomb damage. He was toying with the idea of repairing the roof of the police house before winter set in and his son had, in consequence, almost gone on his bended knees to the county authorities to send a professional on the job, lest the worst should happen to him and his.

  “Tell me all, now. I’m all ears, so go on …”

  P.C. Butt, whose parent hung on him even whilst he shaved, washed, and cleaned his boots, got it all off his chest spasmodically.

  The meeting of Costain after hearing his whistle … The body … The partridges … What Dr. and Mrs. Gell had said and done.

  “An’ now, they’ve sent for Scotland Yard and Costain, like as not, ’ll be workin’ with whoever comes from London. Allus was lucky, Joe Costain.”

  “Costain’s got Scotland Yard, ’as he? Well, you got me, see, son? Good as any Scotland Yard chap, I am.”

  “H’m,” said Butt the younger without enthusiasm.

  “You do as yer told and you’ll soon see. Now, first thing is, you go an’ examine the spot, see? Specially where those partridges were … They’s some connection between those partridges and the crime, I’ll be bound. Those birds ’ad their necks wrung, didn’t they? And what did the corpse ’ave? Tell me that.”

  “What did he ’ave?”

  “His neck wrung.”

  Old Butt delivered this amazing piece of news with the gravity of an oracle.

  “Now go right away and examine where you found them birds. An’ then walk up the road, seeking out in the highways an’ byeways, and find if they’s traces of anyone hidin’ … lyin’ in wait for the victim, see? Get off with you!”

  “Me breakfast,” whined P.C. Butt despairingly.

  “Leave that for the time bein’. You can eat an’ enjoy it when you done what you oughter.”

  So the dutiful P.C. did as he oughter and set out on a tour of inspection.

  Costain was nowhere to be seen, so Butt got on with his job unhampered and without embarrassment.

  First he pondered over the scene of the crime, already photographed, scoured for clues and generally trampled over by experts from Melchester, who were now having breakfast at the village inn. There was a young constable on guard at the spot and he greeted Butt distantly, like a city man condescending to a country cousin. There were a number of village urchins there, too, vividly re-enacting the murder by strangling each other and tying rope and twine around one another’s necks. One small boy was black in the face under the digital pressure of a larger lad on his windpipe.

  “’Ere, be off, you lot!” roared Butt, flailing the air with his arms and charging here and there trying to box the ears of the offenders. He was in a furious temper at finding his pitch queered by interlopers. He caught the smallest and least offensive of them a resounding blow in the middle of the back which propelled him about twenty yards along the road and almost unseated Mr. Turncote, who was starting off on his bike in search of eggs for his brood. The vicar did not notice what was going on, but righted his machine from its violent wobble and went on his way like one in a dream. He had left some chops cooking in the oven and was calculating to what extent they would be done by the time he had circulated round the local farms.

  The young constable clicked his teeth at his elder colleague’s behaviour, and the rabble of youngsters gathered round their offended pal, now howling his head off, and escorted him home. There it was proposed
to report the assault to his mother, a violent woman, in the hope that she would take reprisals on the unlucky Butt.

  “I’m not stoppin’,” said Butt to the other bobby. “Got me rounds to do. S’long …”

  Looking here and there, like an actor who has forgotten his lines and vainly seeks the prompter, Butt made an undignified get-away and sought shelter down a by-path known as Lovers’ Lane, the thick, high hedges and mossy banks of which encouraged erotic goings-on after dark and gave rise to its highly original name.

  “Ar,” said Butt to himself profoundly, and looked about him.

  Here and there along Lovers’ Lane there were gaps in the hedge, broken by those who, seeking solitude from the amorous crowds who gathered there in the mating season, preferred to reduce the nation’s food stocks by cuddling in the corn behind. The farmer, intent on the Augean task of preventing love from finding a way, but not to the extent of sitting out with a gun all night, had woven a complicated net of barbed wire in each of the gaps.

  P.C. Butt, spotting the prints of large feet with feathers framing them in one of these alcoves, halted to let his brains slowly grind.

  “Har,” he said to himself with emphasis.

  He was countryman enough to perceive the roosting spot of a covey of partridges in the stubble behind the gap and to recognise the feathers as part of the slaughter.

  “Har.”

  He looked at the impressions of big feet, turned over the feathers with a huge forefinger, and regarded the treacherous wire profoundly. Goaded by passion, lovers had wrenched a hole in the net of barbs through which to squeeze their nimble ways to their couch of corn. Hanging from one of the ugly points was a small triangle of blue serge. P.C. Butt detached it from its moorings and put it in his cigarette case, which was an elegant two-ounce tobacco tin with all the paint worn off by constant use. Extracting a small cigarette therefrom, the bobby inserted it in his large face, looked all around to make sure he was not spied upon, and lit up.

  For five minutes Butt pondered his latest find amid a cloud of smoke and a number of assaults from his smoker’s cough. His mind refused to throw up any solution whatever, so he decided to consult his parent.

  Nehemiah Butt was furiously erecting a hen-cote which looked ready to fall upon and flatten the first birds venturing over the threshold. He listened to his son’s account of his morning’s work with a face plainly registering astonishment that he should have begotten such a numbskull.

  “And you calls yerself a constable and you carn’t see what that means?”

  “No, dad. What does it mean? Like as not some lad torn his coat cuddlin’ his girl.”

  And he smirked at the thought of it.

  “Yew … yew … To think yore a responsible police officer! You never seen cloth as good as this ’ere on the back of any village lad as needed to use Lovers’ Lane fer his hammerous designs.… No. Look at yer own tunic and learn a lesson from it.”

  “I don’t get yer, dad. Really I don’t.”

  “Well, I’ll be danged!”

  Whereupon Old Butt thumped the side of the hen roost so violently that the whole structure fell to pieces and collapsed in an untidy heap of firewood.

  “Now look what you done, and me spent a good two hours puttin’ this together. Well, you can put it together agen yerself. Speakin’ o’ that there piece o’ cloth, don’t you see, duffer, who killed those partridges wot you found?”

  “Can’t say I do.”

  “Look ’ere. One: near where the body was found last night yew found them birds. Two: near the body yew finds a certain person dressed in blue serge.… No, don’t interrupt. Three: near where them birds bin roostin’ and bin killed yew finds a piece o’ serge torn from wot? Why, a policeman’s tunic or pants …”

  “Costain!! He done it?”

  “Course he done it. Plain as the nose on yer face. Now you got ’im. Policeman infringin’ the game laws … found out … drummed out o’ the force. And yew left in charge o’ the case with the Scotland Yard chap. An’ with me to be behind yew, yore made, William, yore made.”

  “I’m off right away, dad, to report this.”

  P.C. Butt performed a grotesque dance in his excitement, thereby causing a cold frame, erected two days before by his sire, to collapse with a sound of shattering glass.

  “Don’t be a bee fool,” roared his father. (The Seventh Day Resters never swear in full). “Yew gotta get more proof yet. Nice howdedoo you’d be in if Costain gave an alibi. No. Yew got to see them trousers or that tunic as he tore. Then you got ’im.”

  The church clock struck twelve.

  “I’ve had no food, except a cup o’ tea, since I got up,” complained Butt.

  “Yew oughter forget yore silly appetites and sich like till you settled this,” remarked Old Nehemiah, regarding the roof of the house with an expert eye. “I’ll make a start on that roof if it’s fine to-morrow.”

  After lunch, P.C. Butt went back to the village, hunting for Costain. He hoped to meet his colleague and under the guise of examining his uniform in the course of a discussion about the need for a new one of his own, find out the truth of old Butt’s deductions.

  But Costain was nowhere in sight. Instead, a queue of women, waiting in front of the fish-shop, started to bait Butt. The fishmonger, who also sold fruit, vegetables and tripe, received his fish at about ten in the morning. He then spent two hours behind closed doors, whetting the shoppers’ appetites by arranging his goods in the window and ostentatiously making up parcels of it for the gentry and other favourites. Then he went to his dinner at noon and stayed until two-thirty. By three o’clock he was ready for business, which consisted of selling the best cuts to those who took as well two or three pounds of carrots, sprouts or other prevailing vegetables, and dishing out the coarse remnants to the ones who refused.

  It was half-past-two when Butt passed the infuriated fish-shop queue and they were in prime condition for setting about him with a will.

  There has always been deadly enmity between Ditchling and Ravelstone since the peasants of the former refused to team-up with the latter for the Peasants’ Revolt in 1381. Annual cricket contests always end in bodyline and bloodshed; rival villagers regard each other’s gardens and hen-runs as legitimate places for raid and pillage by night; if a Ditchling lad gets a Ravelstone girl into trouble, or vice versa, he is treated as having scored a point in the eternal contest; and if, in spite of universal pressure, a Ditchlinger marries a Ravelstonian, the marriage is regarded as not having taken place at all and the parties are forced to live in sin outside the boundaries of the offended parishes.

  Butt, regarded as a spy and interloper and as the embodiment of all the villainy and seduction of Ditchling Episcopi, was legitimate prey. One of more imagination and less stubborn fibre would have kept away.

  Several women made noises usually expressed in print by Humph, Pshaw, Tut-tut and ***, as he passed, red of face and heavy of foot.

  “Hush, here comes the bogey man!”

  “Look what the cat’s brought in to catch the murderer!”

  “Make way for the big-shot sleuth!”

  Verbal brickbats failed to penetrate Butt’s thick carapace, however.

  But at length came the last bitter shaft.

  “Joe Costain was up and solved it all while you was asleep in yer bed. No flies on Joe! Three cheers for Joe Costain, who doesn’t need any dirty Ditchlinger to ’elp him.”

  Butt saw red.

  “Yew keep civil tongues in yer ’eads or I’ll take yer names fer obstructin’ in the discharge o’ duty.”

  There were loud hoots of derisive laughter, which added fuel to the now roaring fire of William’s wrath.

  “Solved it, ’as he? Yore wonderful Joe hasn’t solved anythin’, see? I solved it.”

  In his blind fury Butt mixed up who had choked Free and who had throttled the partridges.

  “In my pocket I got evidence as’ll convict one o’ yew Ravelstone clever-Dicks o’ the crime. Wait
till to-night when I’m off duty and call on the Chief Constable. That’ll make some of yer sit up. When you hear it, you’ll not hold up yer heads again for many a long day. Yew and yore Joe Costain.…”

  Here P.C. Butt deemed it meet to beat as dignified a retreat as he could manage, for, in the distance, he could make out Mrs. Lillywhite, mother of the boy he had battered earlier that day, and her very walk told she was on the warpath. If she joined and made common cause with the women of the fish queue, the fate of Orpheus would be nothing compared with his. So he hurried home to Ditchling by secret paths, there to meditate on the awful fate awaiting Joe Costain that night.

  Old Butt was already on the roof removing some slates, but his son was too occupied to notice him. Shutting himself in the front-room, P.C. William Butt wrote out a long report in his best handwriting on several sheets of foolscap.

  “In the course of my duties this a.m., I passed down Lovers’ Lane …”

  Was it officially known as Lovers’ Lane? He looked on the Ordnance Map, but there it had no name at all. Butt decided to call at the nearest farm and make proper enquiries. It wouldn’t do to make an ass of himself with the Chief.

  It was dark outside when Butt set out to confirm that Lovers’ Lane really was what it had been called by gentry and serfs alike since Domesday Book. He had left a space in his voluminous manuscript and would insert the proper description after confirming it. Then he would get the bus to Melchester and denounce Costain.

  As he climbed Gallows Hill he seemed to hear footsteps behind him, but when he halted to make sure, either the steps halted or didn’t exist at all.

  Butt felt light-hearted. This would finally settle the long internecine strife in the local constabulary. Costain’s luck would fail him this time.

  Butt smiled to himself in the dark, and, raising his huge paws, slapped them together and rubbed them in glee.

  Before he could lower his arms again something hit him on the back of the neck. As he reeled forward, bewildered and dazed, his fall was broken by a tight, searing grip on his throat.

  In his young days P.C. Butt, trained by his autocratic parent, had been a bit of a wrestler. With flashing lights before his eyes from the throttling grip, he made a last effort, seized his assailant and performed the feat known as “the flying mare.” A dark body whirled over the constable’s shoulder and hit the grass bank at the roadside with a thud.