Ellis Peters - George Felse 10 - The Knocker On Death's Door (5 page)

“Quite a lot of the monastic houses had degenerated badly by that time,” Robert said, “especially the more remote ones that were a law to themselves. And ours was pretty remote. This tale about the church door belongs towards the end. They say one of the brothers—there must have been more than four then—had made the classic pact with the devil, signing away his soul in return for diabolical help in this world, especially at raising spirits, and then tried to back out of the bargain at the crucial hour by taking refuge in the church. But wherever he tried to enter, the doors remained barred against him. In his despair he fell on his knees in the south porch and clutched at the sanctuary knocker, as the best he could do, but the cold iron burned his hand as if it had been red-hot, and forced him to loose his hold. And the devil took him.” Robert’s quiet voice quivered momentarily. Such a pale, still face… Dinah shivered, watching him. She had never really noticed him before, only recorded externals, measuring a potential enemy. “Not physically, however. According to the story, the monks came down for Prime, and found his body huddled at the foot of the door, stone dead. No marks on him, not even a burned hand.”

“How very odd,” said the old lady with detached disapproval, “that I never remember hearing this nonsense before! And what nonsense it is! Just a perfectly ordinary door!”

“I quite agree,” admitted Robert. “Most such stories are nonsense, but people go on telling them. The door has always been credited—or discredited—with being haunted, but I can’t say we ever had any odd experiences with it here, or noticed anything queer about it. I don’t know— maybe we’re just inured, because we lived with all these things so intimately and so long. The time might come when one took even ghosts for granted, and failed to see them…”

Dinah shuddered and shook herself. Perhaps, she thought, even that could happen, when you belong only to the past; not even to the present, much less the future. And she thought, well, yes, there’s always Canada—or Australia, where you have to be real or people fail to see
you
!

She thought of the antique iron beast, playfully proffering his twisted ring of hope, and grinning as it burned the desperate hand that reached for it. For the rest of the evening—mercifully it was short, old people retire early— she could not get it out of her head. She was grateful to Hugh for his delicacy and affection when he broke up the coffee-party in the drawing-room—Robert had made the coffee, of course!—and took her tenderly home through the thinning fog, at a slow speed which permitted him to keep an arm about her all the way. He was warm, quiet and bracing. She was practically sure that she loved him.

Dave was brewing tea in the kitchen when she came in from the yard, with Hugh’s kiss still warm and confident on her lips, and her backward glance still illuminated by the light from Hugh’s flat over the stable. He hadn’t drawn the curtains, and he had just hauled off his shirt and plunged across the bedroom towards the shower-room beyond. Then the light went out, and the October night swallowed him. Good night, Hugh!

“That Brummagem bloke didn’t come in for his car,” Dave said. She hardly heard him, she was so far away. “He must be staying overnight. He said he might. Wonder what on earth he expected to find worth his while in these parts?”

“Ghosts, hobgoblins, pacts, devils… who knows?” said Dinah, yawning. “Witchcraft and such is
news
these days, didn’t you know?”

“How did it go?” asked Dave curiously.

“Oh, not so bad! They’re dead,” she said simply, “but never mind, Hugh’s alive.” She wandered to bed, hazy with Traminer. Dave watched her go, reassured. As for Bracewell, he’d be in early in the morning, just as he’d said.

But early is a relative term, and freelance photographers, perhaps, keep different hours from office workers, garage proprietors and such slaves of the clock. The Brummagem bloke had still not put in an appearance to claim his repaired Morris when Dave drove the vicar’s third-hand Cortina back to the vicarage, on its new tyres at just after nine o’clock, as promised. His nearest way back to the garage was through the churchyard. Thus it was Dave who happened to be the first person to pass close by the south porch on this misty Wednesday morning, and casting the native’s natural side-glance towards the legendary door within, register the startling apparition of size ten shoe-soles jutting into the dawn.

There was a man inside the shoes. The dim light under the trees drew in outline long, trousered legs in flannel grey, the hem of a short car coat, bulky shoulders under brown gaberdine, straw-coloured hair spilled on the flagstones from a lolling head that was not quite the right shape.

Dave advanced by inches, chilled and yet irresistibly drawn. He saw an extended arm, fingers and palm flattened against the foot of the closed door. He stepped over the sprawled legs, and peered at the motionless face. The eyes were open, glazed and bright, glaring at the shut door, straining after the calm within. The jaw had dropped, as if parted upon a desperate cry for help.

The photographer from Birmingham, who had sensed a story here in the barbarian territory of Middlehope, and staked his freelance reputation upon cornering the scoop, was never going to file his story after all. He was dead and cold at the foot of the sanctuary door.

DAVE started back for the vicarage at a run. The nearest telephone was there, and the vicar had to know, in any case, and was by far the most suitable person to stand guard over the scene until the police arrived. The one thing everyone knows about the scene of a crime—especially a murder—is that nothing must be moved or touched until the whole circus has had its way. That this was a crime was not in doubt for a moment. And not merely a murderous assault, but a murder. The large, jagged stone that lay in the middle of the flagged path, ominously stained, had not fallen out of the trees; there was a gap among the whitened stones fringing the grass, to show where someone had plucked it from, and there was the dark, muddied red hollow in the photographer’s skull to show what the same someone had done with it. There was no misting of breath on metal when Dave held his silver lighter against the open lips, the hand he touched gingerly was marble-cold. It never entered his head to think of a doctor. Doctors weren’t going to do anything for this poor devil from now on, except haggle over the time and the exact cause of his death. The Reverend Andrew, a realistic soul, accepted what he was told without demanding that it be repeated. When he said something he meant it, and not being lavish or fluent with words, he expected to have the few he did use taken as gospel. Moreover, he recognised a like directness in Dave. He waved him at once to the telephone, and galloped off towards the churchyard, to mount guard over the body that must have lain unguarded all night. And Dave called, not headquarters at Comerbourne, as the vicar would probably have done, but Sergeant Moon, up the valley at Abbot’s Bale. The moment the outside world laid an encroaching hand on the property, privacy or peace of mind of Middlehope, the whole valley closed its ranks.

“Stand by, and we’ll be down there in a quarter of an hour,” said Sergeant Moon. “Don’t leave him alone, but don’t let anyone touch anything.”

“No, that’s taken care of—the vicar’s keeping an eye on him.”

And Dave went to join him. The Reverend Andrew was examining everything in the south porch with appalled but fascinated eyes, as closely as he could without disturbing anything. He wasn’t a native, and he was young enough and innocent enough to find life in Middlehope a little wanting in action—being excluded by his office from about nine-tenths of what action there really was. He would have been horrified if it had so much as entered his mind that he could be glad of a murder; but here was one on his doorstep whether he wanted it or not, and it was impossible not to feel a decided curiosity, and even a certain distinctly pleasurable excitement.

“Desecrated!” he said, looking over his shoulder at Dave from his precious door. “This means we shall have to get it reconsecrated all over again.”

“A pity we can’t just do the same for him,” Dave said drily. He couldn’t take his eyes from the misshapen head and the jagged stone with its stained edges. He thought of fragments of hair and skin adhering, to make the manner of the assault certain, and of fingerprints to identify the hand that had held the weapon. But no, not from that stone, not a hope! It was a bright, whitish lump, full of mica crystals, without a smooth surface anywhere on it. More likely, perhaps, to have abraded the attacker’s fingertips when he struck with it, and collected some sample of skin or blood tissue that might lead to him by another way. There was a police forensic laboratory in Birmingham; the full treatment would be available within a couple of hours at the most.

The thought was at once reassuring and chilling, as though the valley had already been invaded by the apparatus of unlawful death, as indeed it had from the moment the stone was plucked out of the grass. No going back now. Dave had never felt himself so much a native. He also felt, to tell the truth, a little sick, but no one looking at his dour, quiet face would have realised it.

If he had ever entertained any idea that the law moved slowly and sleepily in these parts, he was soon disabused of it. Sergeant Moon and one of his constables came rattling down the valley from Abbot’s Bale in the sergeant’s old Ford within thirteen minutes, slipped the car inside the vicarage drive, and arrived without alerting the village. The relief and security Dave felt at the very sight of the big sergeant was illuminating; after all, he was only Middlehope at all by marriage, but of his membership in the islanded community here there could no longer be any doubt. He might have been there since before Eliseg’s grandson set up the memorial pillar to him, over in Wales. He even walked and talked like a Middlehope man. Easy to see why he never wanted to move away, not even for promotion. What did he want with promotion, when he was already, after his fashion, a minor prince?

“Ah,” said the sergeant, considering the body of the photographer from Birmingham with the same gravity and calm with which he daily summed up the weather prospects at the edge of winter, and estimated his commitment in case of isolation. “Stranger. Didn’t I see him last Sunday? With a camera?” It was not really a question, unless to himself, and already provided with its answer. Dave said nothing, not yet. When the sergeant wanted anything from him, he’d ask for it.

“You found him, Dave? Statements come later, now just tell me.” Sergeant Moon knew every soul who belonged in his domain, and could call them all by their first names.

Dave told him, slowly and accurately, with times. He knew when he’d left home, he knew how long it took to drive a car round into the vicarage garage and walk back here. “I know who he is—or at least I know who he said he was. He brought his car in to our place yesterday morning with damaged steering, and gave me his card. He said he might stay overnight. I had the car ready last night, but I didn’t think anything when he didn’t come for it, after what he’d said. His name’s Bracewell. And you’re right, he was here on Sunday covering the service. He was in ‘The Sitting Duck’ that evening. That’s all I know about him. Except that he was interested in that door—more than most, I mean. As if he thought he was on to something special about it, and thought he might get a good story out of it. I don’t know how, he didn’t say.”

For Dave it was quite a speech. The sergeant patted his shoulder vaguely, and digested, with no vagueness at all, what he had told him. The Reverend Andrew hovered, with nothing to do but confirm the circumstances that had brought him there.

And then, within three quarters of an hour of the discovery of the body, the whole apparatus suddenly went into top gear. The succession of events was bewildering. First came the valley police doctor, hurtling in preoccupied and surly to kneel beside the dead man, touch him delicately, probe half-heartedly for a temperature (the body was full clothed for an autumn night) and think better of it. Let the pathologist worry about the precise time of death—not that it would be very precise in the circumstances!—when he got here from Comerbourne. The doctor confirmed the indisputable fact of death, cast one significant glance at the all too obvious matter now darkening and drying on the stone, and withdrew in businesslike fashion to his practice. He had a lot of patients waiting and a lot of territory to cover afterwards, and the sergeant had caught him just at the opening of his surgery.

Hard on his heels came a police van from Comerbourne with the photography team, and a car containing a detective constable as driver, one detective sergeant, Chief Inspector George Felse, and Dr. Reece Goodwin, the hospital pathologist who bore the blessing of the Home Office in these parts. Detective Superintendent Duckett, the head of the county C.I.D., had been in his car somewhere on the way to consult his Chief Constable about something quite different—a matter of certain local bank frauds—when Moon’s call came through, and thus fate dropped the case into George’s hands from its inception. Duckett might well be along later, when the message reached him. Moon, to be truthful, rather hoped not; he got on better with George.

“I shouldn’t have said it,” owned George resignedly. “Soon found a way to fetch me back, didn’t you?” He looked the scene over for a moment in silence, and arrived at the vicar and Dave, still patiently in attendance.

“Dave Cressett here found him,” said Moon practically. “He’s a busy man, with a garage and filling station to look after, and not two minutes away when wanted. Now if the vicar here could loan us a room as office, that would be the most convenient arrangement for everybody.”

The Reverend Andrew, appalled and delighted, was willing to make over half of his monstrous vicarage to them if required, and said so. Nothing half as interesting as this had happened to him since he came to Mottisham, and the prospect of a front seat on the investigation was dreadfully attractive.

“All right, Jack, you get a preliminary statement from Mr. Cressett, and I’ll see him later on.”

Dave looked back curiously as he was ushered, with Sergeant Moon, back into the vicarage gates, crossing the main road, where now the infallible grape-vine had already assembled a small and watchful audience, conversing in pregnant whispers. The team of photographers circled and aimed and manoeuvred round the porch, focusing the body, the weapon, the outflung hand and broken head. Dr. Goodwin, a round, bounding, energetic man who appeared fifty and was actually pushing sixty-five, was on his knees beside the corpse. And one more car was just arriving, and decanting the forensic scientist from the laboratory in Birmingham, last of the team to put in an appearance.

Suddenly the south porch of St. Eata’s was a seething hive of industry, and there were some eight or nine people clustered like bees in swarm round the indifferent body of Gerry Bracewell.

Before eleven o’clock they had lifted the body carefully into an outspread polythene sheet, retrieved the open briefcase from under it, and packed the deceased into a plastic shell, which was promptly whisked away under Dr. Goodwin’s supervision to the hospital mortuary in Comerbourne. It was inconveniently far from the scene, but that was unavoidable, there was no suitable place nearer. The relevant exhibits had vanished with the man from the forensic laboratory. The south porch looked empty and innocent again, and the imperturbably amiable iron beast chewed his twisted ring and grinned as before. In the vicarage George made hurried notes before following the body to the mortuary, and somewhere on the road to Birmingham his sergeant fretted at a succession of red traffic lights, on his way to break the news to Mrs. Roberta Bracewell, and bring her to identify her husband’s body. It was a job that mustn’t be put off, but on the other hand couldn’t be indecently rushed. George reckoned he had plenty of time to call at Dave Cressett’s garage, and still be at the mortuary before the post mortem could begin.

The Morris was four years old, none too well maintained, and had accumulated the usual hotchpotch of appurtenances official and unofficial, assortment of cleaning rags, old tools, paper tissues, folding red triangle for travel abroad, one left glove, a man’s knitted scarf, a crumpled packet of cigarettes, a box of first-aid dressings and a dismembered morning paper, but nothing at all suggestive or interesting. It stood waiting in. the rear part of the yard, beyond the workshop.

“You’ll probably want to take it away,” said Dave, watching the chief inspector’s face attentively. A thin, dark, self-contained, mildly humorous face. Moon liked him, and Moon’s liking was a decided recommendation.

“I doubt it,” said George, “seeing he left it here with you yesterday morning, and it’s been here ever since. Keep it for a couple of days, and I’ll get it looked over here on the spot. It’s as private as anywhere. When we’ve finished with it I’ll clear it for you, and you can hand it over to the widow. Or if you prefer, we’ll do that for you.”

“I’d rather do it myself. He left it here for a job to be done, and I’d like to hand it back in good order to whoever owns it now. There’s a widow, then?”

“Yes, he was married. No children, apparently. He took just his briefcase out of the back there when you left, you said? Nothing else?”

“No, nothing else. He said he might stay overnight, so I thought nothing of it when he didn’t show up in the evening.” He wanted to ask if Bracewell had indeed booked a room at the Martel Arms Hotel, but he wasn’t on that kind of terms with the chief inspector. If it had been Sergeant Moon he would have asked whatever he wanted to know, and Moon would have told him as much as he thought he should be told. George was to be encountering the shadow of Sergeant Moon on every side in this valley, but it didn’t matter. Moon was his man, and could pick up at leisure what was withheld from his chief.

A confidence might always be worth a confidence in return. “He booked in all right,” said George. “He left his pyjamas and shaving kit there in the room. Nobody realised he wasn’t in overnight, because up here—but I realise I’m telling a native the facts of life—nobody bothers to lock hotel rooms or hand in keys. They thought he was sleeping a bit late this morning, but he hadn’t asked for a call, so they never even wondered until around nine o’clock.” He turned briskly away from the car. “Now if I could have one more word with Miss Cressett and your partner…”

Dinah and Hugh were in the kitchen together, and the shocked and wary glances they turned when they were interrupted, and the way their low-pitched and subdued voices died upon the air, spoke for them.

“Don’t let me disturb you,” George said. “I just wanted to make sure on one point. On your way back from the Abbey last night—that would be at about ten o’clock?”

“Just about ten past when we got here,” said Hugh. “I looked at my watch after we said good night.”

“So probably around ten when you came though the village. You’d touch only one side of the churchyard on that route, I know, but did you see anyone moving around at that hour? Anywhere in that stretch?”

They had not, and said so. “Except Joe Lyon, just making off across the lane to the fields, on his way home,” added Hugh. “But I bet you’ll find he’d left the bar of the ‘Duck’ a couple of minutes before. He always leaves just before ten, he’s got a long way to go.”

“Nobody else at all?”

“Not a soul. It was misty and miserable outside.”