Ellis Peters - George Felse 10 - The Knocker On Death's Door (8 page)

She looked up at Dave, across her plain, practical, uncluttered workroom, and smiled. Smiling made her mouth slightly oblique, one corner flicking engagingly upwards.

It sounded hopeless. One house in a series of at least five, one minor feature in the house, one visit… “It was expecting a lot,” Dave owned ruefully.

“As it happens, I had some reason to remember it, though not enough to be much use to him, apparently. I do remember it was a nice piece of carving, though very dark and coated with a rather nasty varnish…”

“They’ve removed that,” said Dave.

“Good for them! It did look well worth cleaning up. But nobody said a word, about any legends attaching to it, not to us, at any rate. Of course, it was the old man himself who showed us round, and he wasn’t the kind to retail legends, from what we saw of him. He scoffed at the whole thing. I was slightly offended, to tell the truth, after all I was twenty-three then, and took my job very seriously, and I expected patrician elderly gentlemen to take their historic houses seriously, too. He didn’t. He told me exactly what he thought of old, cold, insanitary stone houses, and said if my rag thought so highly of the place they could have it, he was only waiting for a reasonable offer. He was a character. And handsome, too. Not to say oncoming! What I chiefly remember about the wine-cellar is that he contrived to close the door—or partially close it—with himself and me inside, while Gerry was making some shots of the outside.”

“Then he
did
photograph the door?” Dave interrupted quickly.

“Oh, yes, both he and I were quite sure of that, that’s why he was hunting for the prints, but none of us had kept them—they weren’t used, as you’ve seen. And when we were alone inside there, not to make a long story of it, old Mr. Martel made a very debonair but very determined pass at me, and I had to whip the door open pretty smartly and make a discreet getaway. The things I know about that door are not so much visual, consequently. What I remember most is how surprised I was, considering its size, at the sweet way it swung. Whoever hung it knew his business. It balanced beautifully, even though it wasn’t all that well cared for, and creaked a little in motion.”

It sounded absolutely authentic. Given the late Robert’s reputation, it would have been unthinkable for him to be shut in a cellar with an attractive twenty-three-year-old girl and not make a pass at her. He would have considered it an opportunity wasted, almost a dereliction of duty.

“But nothing else strikes you about the door as you remember it?—the door or the knocker?”

She shook her head. “I’m sorry! If only I knew what sort of something, even!”

“If only I could tell you,” he agreed ruefully. “Well, thanks, anyhow. I shall have to pass on all this to the police. You won’t mind?”

The heavy, smooth cap of russet hair swung again. “I don’t mind. I’ll keep thinking about it. Something might occur to me.”

He knew he had interrupted her in the middle of a job, there was paper in the typewriter on the desk at the window, and a sheaf of loose pages beside it to be copied. He knew he ought to go, and was even aware that he would be well advised to go now, if he intended ever to come this way again. The time for knowing her better was not yet; but it would come.

“Yes, do keep it in mind. If you think of anything that even may be significant, would you let the Midshire C.I.D. know about it?” He had the wit not to ask her to regard him as the natural intermediary, and send her afterthoughts to him.

She had risen with him, to accompany him to the door. She had a long, free, self-reliant step, and when she gave him her hand it was significant, the seal on an agreement. At the last moment, before he turned towards the gate and she closed the door, she said with deliberation: “A photograph might help, if your local paper carried one. Look in, when you’re in town again, and if you’ve got a picture, bring it with you.”

It was the measure of her impact that there was no echo at all. Bobbie Bracewell might never have existed. All he felt was that simple and exhilarating lift of the heart assuring him that he would see Alix Trent again, that it was she who was making the approach easy for him.

“I will,” he said, and walked away from her down the path with
The Midland Scene
under his arm, and a sense of sudden achievement flooding his senses, as though the sun had come out.

George Felse stood under the arching trees that shadowed the south porch of St. Eata’s, in the first fine drizzle of rain, and stared at the wreath of wilted, greyish-green herbage that sagged on the sanctuary knocker. The head of the mythical beast, inanely grinning, jutted out of the tired greenery like a clown from a wilted muslin ruff, obscenely mocking the gravity of the beholders. Withdrawn, the village moved about stealthily in circles, eyes slanted always towards the profaned place of death, feet always directed assiduously somewhere else. There wasn’t a soul for two miles round who didn’t know.

The dark-green, crinkled leaves drooped despondently, as if they held out very little hope that they would be effective in warding off the obscure evil from outside human experience—which was hypothetically the purpose for which someone had placed them there. It was even something of an achievement to get hold of that much parsley in October, let alone hang it in position in this most exposed of places without being caught in the act. Though a soul benevolent enough to be scheming for the protection of this troubled place against all evil spirits should also have been indifferent to observation. Unless, of course, by demons, whose attentions it would be reasonable enough to avoid if possible.

“All right,” said George philosophically, “you didn’t see anyone, you don’t know anything. I get it. But you do know what this is for, don’t you? Avaunt, ye spirits of chaos, spawn of darkness, malicious powers, make yourselves scarce! This is no place for you, this is a place protected. All right, you can unhook it now, it’s served its purpose.”

“I dursen’t, sir,” said Ebenezer Jennings without a blush, and stood by George’s side in full daylight to be surveyed, his face as hard as the building stone they had once quarried from the western slope of Callow, now long overgrown in bracken and furze. “That’s magic, sir. That’s good magic. I don’t meddle with yon. This church is troubled bad, and that garland, that’s blessed. Yes, I do know what virtue’s in these leaves. You leave ’un there, I say. That ain’t no ill, is it? Leave ’un be, and hope!”

George wondered, in one instant of mental irresponsibility, whether it was the mere fact of the man’s office as verger, or something in his remarkable appearance, that enabled him to get away with that kind of language without being ridiculous. He was almost sure that it was not because of any actual belief he had in these things; on the contrary, the whole delivery had something of the impressiveness of a first-class theatrical performance, larger than life and double as natural. The office of verger was practically hereditary in Mottisham; and this was the role that went with it, the trappings, the privilege.

Eb Jennings the Fifth was a man of medium height and inordinate dryness, all stout bones and leathery hide without much flesh between. He looked as if the wind might blow him away, but he was as tough as old boots. His head was large, with a lofty, domed skull bristling with long grey hair, his face all forehead, tapering away down a long nose to a narrow, hanging jaw, and his eyes in their gaunt sockets burned with a dark, prophetic fire. He would not have been out of place in the direst books of the Old Testament. Even in ancient flannels blotched with paint and grease, and a washed-out oiled-wool sweater, beginning to unravel at the hem, he was impressive.

“And how can you be sure it was put there to protect?” George asked curiously, watching the verger’s lantern of a face. “Oh, yes, we know that’s what it means, or what it’s supposed to mean, but what if whoever put it there did it to frighten the whole village half to death, on the principle of ‘the mair mischief of mair sport’? That wouldn’t be much benefit to anybody except the murderer, would it? If he stirred up enough muck he might escape notice in the obscurity. Might even be left free to make his next move, whatever that may be. You live here at the lodge on the corner of the churchyard, don’t you? Right in the danger zone!”

A boy of about eighteen or nineteen came butting through the gathering rain, shears in hand, and dived into the porch beside them just in time to hear this. George had seen him clipping back the encroaching ivy from the north wall before the shower began.

“Don’t you waste your time trying to scare this old raven,” he said, punching Jennings lightly in the ribs, and dropping the shears on to the bench inside the porch. “I’d be sorry for the demon that tried tangling with him, I tell you.”

“You mind your own business,” Eb Jennings told him smartly, “and don’t interrupt your elders and betters.”

“And don’t let him kid you he takes any stock in this Dracula stuff,” went on the boy, undeterred, nodding a shaggy, light-brown head at the dangling wreath. “He’s got his own recipes.” He sat down beside his shears, and leaned to examine the withering leaves more closely. His lively lips curled in tolerant disdain. “You know there’s a couple of London cranks from some psychic research gang booked in the ‘Arms’ last night? And a folklore collector from Birmingham? As well as a few national press folks. Somebody slipped the word out there were devils loose up here.”

“Somebody,” said George, “certainly did.” He was less concerned about that particular somebody. The murderer was hardly likely to want professional observers on the scene, however effectively they might embarrass the police; they were all too likely to turn up something he wanted to remain buried. But the man who hung up a clear alarm signal on the spot could well be the murderer himself, studying to redouble confusion, while he himself withdrew farther into the undergrowth. “Good for the hotel trade, at any rate.”

“Maybe Mrs. Lloyd hung up the parsley,” suggested the boy cheerfully. “Bait for the ghost-hunters!”

“Only fools mock the presence of evil,” said Eb Jennings reprovingly, scowling at the boy, whose long legs spread across the porch almost to the bench on the other side.

“Why not, if propitiation does no good? You might as well die laughing.” He patted the purring iron beast. “Caution, guard dogs on patrol!”

“I will not stay,” said Jennings magnificently, “to listen to impious talk. You’ll excuse me, Mr. Felse, I’ve got work to do.” And as he made his exit through the church, that being the driest way, he looked back at the boy and said, making a lightning return to everyday practicality: “And since you’ve been druv in by the rain, you can go and get some wood in for your mother.”

He was gone, leaving the knocker swaying gently, and rustling as the leaves brushed the door. He also left his own minor shock still almost palpable on the air. George told himself that he ought to have guessed. There was something in their wrangling, teasing, needling exchanges that yet stopped short of all malice, and argued a very considerable area of understanding between them. And yet they were, physically, so strikingly unlike.

The boy was more than a head the taller, elegantly long and loose-knit and athletic, with straight fair hair and blue-grey eyes. His face, too, was elongated, but in suave curves, and with a lot of shapely bone; a high-bridged nose jutted haughtily, and brows level as the pommel of a sword underlined a broad forehead. He was looking straight back at George, well aware of what he must be thinking, and visibly speculating as to whether he would or would not ask. Which made it imperative to ask bluntly or not at all.

“So he’s your father?”

“Well,” said the boy with cheerful deliberation, “by courtesy he is. And anyhow, I’d sooner be Jennings, than Macsen-Martel.”

“Like that, is it?” If the boy was willing to accept the conversation on this level, so was George. “You’re the wild oat I’ve been hearing about.”

“I’m one of them,” said the boy drily. “When you’ve been around here a bit longer you’ll learn to spot this debased Norman pan.”

“He’s left more of you around?”

“Brother,” said the boy reverently, “he could field a football team.” The blue-grey eyes flashed in an impudent but engaging smile. “And probably a netball team as well. You ask Sergeant Moon.” He got up, hoisting the shears from where he had laid them. “I suppose I’d really better go and get some wood in for my mother—it’s set in for the day, by the look of it.” And he walked away unconcernedly through the rain, weaving his way blithely among the graves to take the nearest line to the lodge, and whistling as he went, and George saw in this rear view of him the tall, wide-shouldered, narrow-flanked shape and long gait of the Macsen-Martels, unmistakable in movement where he might have missed it completely in repose. One of the family strays, but one that had found a good home. There was nothing the matter with the relationship between courtesy father and son; and what was further implied was that the situation had been accepted by both of them from the beginning. Ask Sergeant Moon! Not bad advice in the circumstances.

There was moss wound into the parsley wreath, and there was the grit of soil and the remains of an orchreous moisture in the moss. Better let the laboratory have a go at it, they might be able to suggest the locality from which it had come, and if the spirit-hunters had begun to arrive, that might not be Mottisham at all. Either some superstitious crank or earnest student of the occult had really put it there in an effort to guard the church and the community against evil spirits, or the murderer had attempted a piece of conjurer’s misdirection to divert attention from his own solid humanity and his entirely earthly motives. No, on reflection there was, regrettably, the third possibility: someone who enjoyed trouble and chaos had simply added his own contribution to the brew here out of pure devilment. Of that kind of devil even villages as remote as Mottisham have more than enough.

George turned up the collar of his coat and made a dash for it through what had now become a downpour, across the road and into the vicarage drive. In the gateway he collided with a young man who had just descended from the Comerbourne bus and made for the same haven. They steadied each other solicitously with hasty apologies, and recognition was instant and mutual.

“I was just coming to see you, Mr. Felse,” said Dave Cressett, hugging
The Midland Scene
under his jacket from the driving rain, “I’ve got something here Mrs. Bracewell asked me to bring to you. And something besides to tell you.”

“Always the door,” said Sergeant Moon, late that Friday evening, after they had abandoned the mounds of official reports and statements, and were sitting back relaxed and tired over cigarettes and beer, thoughtfully brought in from the “Duck” by young Brian Jennings. “I’d be ready to bet my job that we were right, it’s the door, not the man. He just blundered into something he didn’t realise was dangerous— apparently merely by having this feeling that there was something odd about this door he’d once photographed for this magazine article. Now you tell me what dangerous secret there can be about an oak door? Worth killing for?”

“And before he’d even run to earth whatever it was he was after,” George pointed out. “A very dangerous secret indeed—show a little too much interest in it, and that’s enough, you’re knocked off just in case. Yet there was plenty of interest being shown in it—by all kinds of people. It was ceremonially on show. So what was so different about this man Bracewell’s interest, to mark him out as the chance that couldn’t be taken?”

“He was there prowling around it at night,” said Moon, “and alone. A crowd with a battery of cameras was O.K. One man with a torch sneaking back by himself wasn’t.”

“There was one more thing about him that was different, Jack.
He’d seen it before
.”

Moon considered that carefully. For centuries the door had hung in the cellars of the Abbey. The house had never been shown; and it was improbable that there had ever been more than one such article about it as the one in
The Midland Scene
. It wasn’t important enough or beautiful enough; it played too insignificant a part in history. The wonder was that it had achieved a place even once in such a series. That made Bracewell, in all probability, the only person present at the re-dedication, apart, of course, from the family, who had ever seen the door in its previous position.

“But even so, what could there have been about it to make him think he might get a scoop out of it? Something he hadn’t noticed until the thing was cleaned up? But then it would be there for everyone to notice. Whatever was queer about it meant nothing to anyone but him.”

“And what discoveries can you make about a door, for God’s sake? There it is, a solid block of wood with a lump of iron attached, everything about it visible at a glance.” George stretched and yawned. “Well, I’ll see this Miss Trent tomorrow, and have another word with Mrs. Bracewell. Who knows, I may hit on the right question by sheer luck, and stir a recollection, or she may have thought of something on her own. We’ve no choice about pulling out all the stops now, Jack. It took some hard work to get the Old Man to leave it with us, we’ve got to justify it now or die trying.”

“Well, at least we found the camera. Not that I expect the lab boys will get anything off it.” And of course it had been empty, the film extracted, and no doubt burned long before this. “There’s just a chance he’d
have
to take off his gloves to open and close the camera properly, but I’m not betting on it. It’s a smooth one to handle. And me with five chaps combing the place for it,” said Sergeant Moon sadly, “and it had to be young Brian who found it!”

The camera had been half-buried in the debris of dead flowers where old wreaths were dumped, in the most deserted corner of the graveyard. If Brian had not been tidying up the dump that morning, and happened to kick against metal, it might have taken them at least another day to work their way to it.

“It’s true, is it,” George asked, “that Robert Macsen-Martel—the late Robert, that is—left a trail of bastards all round these parts? Brian,” he explained wryly, “chose to account for himself. Quite frankly. According to him there are plenty more.”

“True enough. But the Jennings family, now, they’re a special case. Those three get on so well together, you wouldn’t believe. That’s what I call coming to terms with reality. You haven’t seen the mother, have you? She’s only thirty-nine now, and still as pretty as new paint. Linda Price, she was, went as maid to the Abbey—her old man must have been daft to let her. Nineteen, and a stunner, she was then. Exactly what you’d expect happened. Old Jennings, he’s twenty years older than her, he was a widower, and he had a soft spot for Linda. A sort of honourable bargain it was, and they’ve both kept it. He married her, and took on her boy—and gladly, I may say, his first wife never had any, and Linda’s never had any since, so it looks as if but for her slip-up he hadn’t a chance of getting a son. She’s never looked at anyone but old Eb since, she thinks the sun shines out of his high forehead. They got off lucky, all of ’em, they know how to value one another, even if they are a rum bunch. There’s many a family round here started off with a romantic love affair, and ended up with squabbling parents and problem children, and here’s the Jennings lot starting off with a business arrangement and ending as snug as old lovers, with an only child who hasn’t got so much as a complex or an inhibition to his name. Others,” said the sergeant sombrely, “weren’t so clever. There’s fathers round this valley that know their kids aren’t theirs, and make them pay for it, and what’s more, get it back off the kids with interest. And there’s others that don’t even know, and might very well do murder if they ever found out.”