Here Comes a Chopper (18 page)

‘Which last fact,’ said Mrs Bradley, facing a wrathful Roger, an interested and very thoughtful Bob, and a non-committal Dorothy, ‘is quite true. I had it from the lawyers. There wasn’t a penny. Mr Lingfield had gradually drawn it all out, realized his shares, mortgaged his house and become increasingly in debt to his tailor and wine-merchant.’

‘Then she’s right!’ exclaimed Roger. ‘It isn’t Lingfield who’s dead!’

‘I’ve always thought she was right about that,’ said Bob. ‘Thing is now to produce him alive and well. I suppose that would put the candle-snuffers on the inspector.’

‘I still don’t see why they took Sim’s word rather than Mrs Denbies’,’ said Dorothy. ‘In any case, I don’t see how you could be sure of identifying a body without seeing the head.’

‘Oh, yes, you can,’ said Bob. ‘Wasn’t Mrs Crippen identified by one bit of skin with an appendicitis scar on it, or something?’

‘Well, I think I must go and support poor Claudia,’ said Mrs Bradley, rising. ‘You children, no doubt, can find something to do whilst I’m gone.’

‘I’d like to come with you,’ said Bob. ‘I’d have to leave Wandles this afternoon, anyway, worse
luck, as I must be at the office tomorrow. This lazy pair don’t have to work——’

‘Until Wednesday,’ said Roger, luxuriously. ‘All right, Bob. Be good, and so will we.’

‘Didn’t
you
want to go?’ enquired Dorothy, when they were on their way back after having seen the other two driven off by George the chauffeur in Mrs Bradley’s car.

‘I couldn’t do any good, you know,’ said Roger, scowling down at his shoes. ‘Mrs Bradley will be allowed to see her, I expect, if she’s arrested, but they wouldn’t have me as prisoner’s friend, or whatever it is called, I’m afraid. Poor Claudia! It’s all a damn’ shame! You don’t think she
did
do it, do you?’

‘I’m certain she didn’t. I
was
certain, I
am
certain, and I always shall
be
certain that Mrs Denbies couldn’t murder anyone. Besides, it was all too difficult.’

‘Too carefully planned, you mean? Yes, I think that, too. Whoever did it must have had it in mind for days; perhaps for months. The only snag is …’

‘Yes?’

‘Well, you see, if the body
is
Lingfield, and, although we don’t think it is, there doesn’t seem any way of proving that it isn’t—she had the motive; two motives, in fact, if you believe she didn’t know he hadn’t anything to leave her in his will. They had certainly quarrelled——’

‘Yes, I know, but so have you and I, and neither of us is in the least danger of being murdered by the other.’

‘Speak on your own behalf, dash it! Besides—well, our relationship isn’t exactly the same as theirs was, is it? I mean, they were as good as married. Had been for years, I imagine. Living together on and off, and that kind of thing, you know. I am wondering what will be said about that at the inquest.’

‘Yes.’ She was silent. Roger would have given a good deal to know her thoughts. He said, as they walked across the lawn:

‘What shall we do now they’ve gone?’

‘I wonder what Laura Menzies wants to do?’

‘Dash Laura! She’s got the dogs and a cat and things. She can’t have us as well.’

‘I thought she was head of the house in Mrs Bradley’s absence. Still, if you think she wouldn’t mind——’

‘Of course she won’t mind, chump! I loathe young Amazonian females, and this particular specimen makes me feel as though I’m ten years old and not more than a fly-weight at that.’

‘I wish I could make you feel ten years old. What were you like at ten?’

‘Do you mind not pressing that question? Ten is the average age of the fifteen little devils in my form, and I can’t think why my parents didn’t strangle me long before I was that age, if I was anything like those little blighters, and I’ve a horrible impression that I must have been.’

‘Then you can’t be feeling well,’ said Dorothy.

Laura Menzies, Mrs Bradley’s secretary, met them on the doorstep.

‘Hullo,’ she said. ‘I say, you two won’t want me, I trust? I’ve got stacks of work to do this morning, and I always go to bed on Monday afternoons to gather strength for the week. So do amuse yourselves, will you? I mean, I’m on tap if required, but if you don’t particularly mind——?’

Roger assured her firmly that they did not mind in the least, and she whistled the dogs and walked off. At twenty paces she paused, turned her head and added carelessly:

‘By the way, don’t bother about getting back to lunch if you’d sooner take sandwiches or something, and go out for a good long walk. It’s Monday, and I might as well give Henri the day off. There’s nothing to cook.’

Roger grasped at this delicate hint.

‘Sandwiches? Oh, rather. I say, thanks.’

‘I’ll tell Célestine, then, and you can rely on a really good dinner when you get back. The butcher will call at five. By the way, Mrs Croc. says I’m to warn you not to get lost. Have you got a map? I’ll get you one out of the library. Oh, and Mrs Croc. also says you’d better each take an ashplant if you’re going off the beaten track at all. There are half a dozen in the hall. Take your pick. Take two if you like.’

‘I suppose Mrs Bradley thinks my ankle may go back on me,’ said Roger, selecting a stick with care. ‘I say, this might almost be my own old ashplant, don’t you think? Remember our discussion on the bus that first day about superstitions and so forth?’

‘It doesn’t seem possible that it was such a short time ago,’ said Dorothy. She glanced out at the pleasant spring sunshine and shivered as though she were cold. ‘I
said
something horrid would happen that day, and it did! I only hope——’

‘What?’

‘That ashplants are not unlucky.’

‘Well, the ash does have a bad name in witchcraft, I believe—almost as bad as the elm. Did you ever read a story by Montagu Rhodes James——?’

Discussion and mutual appreciation of
Ghost Stories of an Antiquary
lasted them for the first two miles of their walk. There was no doubt, thought Dorothy, that Roger, when not slavering around after women old enough to be his mother, was quite a companionable young man.

The country round Wandles Parva was pleasantly wooded. Roger and Dorothy strolled through the village along the main road which ran between Bossbury and London and went as far as Culminster Station before they struck off through the fields and woods, proposing to work round to the great park of the Manor House. In this park was the famous Druid Stone, sole survivor of what may have been a complete circle of trilithons or sarcen-stones. By the twentieth century, however, nothing remained save this one sinister, ugly, toad-like altar-stone, itself the sacrificial block in a local murder not more than twenty years old. A nineteenth-century owner of the manor house had planted a circle of
pine trees around the Stone, and the place was reputed to be haunted. Roger and Dorothy, who had heard of the Stone from Mrs Bradley, were both very anxious to see it.

Once through the village they struck away from the highway and took to the common which adjoined it. The land here was open heath and birches, with occasional outcroppings of gravel and with little paths which seemed to have no particular beginning, purpose or destination, but which went running and winding up small rises and down long shallow depressions and then lost themselves among heather roots or in a gorse bush.

‘Different from our last long walk,’ said Roger. They kept the main road in sight and the woods round Wandles Parva at their backs, and came, at the end of an hour of easy walking, to Culminster, a little place where the railway branched to the south and west at a station which seemed disproportionate to the little grey stone town in which it stood.

They visited the Norman church and an ancient priory nearby, and then turned off to the north. This would bring them round in a circle to the Druid’s Stone.

‘It’s a queer thing,’ said Roger, after they had followed a little stream through a flat field into some woods, ‘but I don’t quite fancy these trees. Does it seem to you that there’s somebody dodging and hiding?’

‘Probably the village idiot,’ said Dorothy, trying to speak lightly but aware of a most unpleasant
sensation of fear. She, no less than Roger, had been aware of the uneasy atmosphere of the wood.

‘You’ve noticed it, then?’

‘I thought it was just my fancy.’

‘That proves it isn’t just mine. Look here, if it’s that fellow Sim, I’m going to have it out with him once and for all. I’m sick of having that blighter trailing around.’

‘But surely he wouldn’t follow us down here? How could he know where we were?’

‘That I don’t know, but, if you don’t mind being left alone for five minutes as soon as we come to a clearing, I’m going to make it my business to find out what he’s up to.’

Dorothy disliked intensely the idea of being left alone, but she did not say so. Instead, as soon as they came to a clearing where woodmen had been at work and there were some fallen tree-trunks, she seated herself and said casually:

‘Don’t be long, and please don’t get lost and not be able to find me again. I’ve never really liked the thought of being the Babes in the Wood.’

‘Righto,’ said Roger with equal casualness. ‘I hope the blighter hasn’t got a gun!’

He walked away into the smoke-green woods and left her alone with the tall pink willow-herbs, the wood anemones and her thoughts. He returned in a quarter of an hour.

‘Mistaken,’ he said briefly, seating himself beside her and filling his pipe. ‘Nobody there. I’ve searched thoroughly. It’s only a very small wood. We must be suffering from nerves.’

He was annoyed with himself, and they continued their walk in silence, both conscious, however, that the feeling they had of being shadowed was becoming, if anything, even more pronounced. Roger broke away twice to make a sudden raid into bushes, but came back moodily each time.

‘I shan’t be sorry to get back to the house,’ said Dorothy.

‘I agree,’ he said. ‘All right. Let’s cut out the monolith, and get back to the main road, shall we?’

‘I hate going back the same way.’

Both laughed, remembering the last time she had said the same thing, and then both grew sober.

‘If we
had
gone back the same way, we wouldn’t have got all mixed up with this headless body,’ said Roger. ‘But neither would we have had this week-end together. I tell you what—we’ll toss. Fate shall decide for us.’

‘It will, in any case,’ said Dorothy, not without pessimism. ‘Heads we go on, and tails we go back.’

‘It’s heads.’

‘Oh! Oh, is it? Oh, well, I’m not really sorry. This is the prettier way.’

They tramped on, came out of the wood at last, and then followed a bridle-path in a long sweep north-westwards until they had encircled the Manor House. The last part of the walk had lain across open country, and, finding it perfectly empty, their spirits had revived and they were glad they had not given in to their nerves and imaginations.

Time and the war had wrought changes since Mrs Bradley had first come to live in the Stone House at Wandles Parva. For one thing, the Manor House had ceased to be privately owned. It had been purchased by the local council and later had been commandeered by the Army. With the coming of peace, the council had taken it over again, the Druid’s Stone had become a goal for sightseers, and a right of way had been made between the Manor park and the vicarage lane.

Roger opened the wicket-gate which led into the grounds, and Dorothy led the way along the narrow path to the circle of pines and the Stone.

Roger allowed her to go on, and then suddenly he put down his ashplant and he himself dropped flat on his face behind a rhododendron bush, and cautiously peered round its edge.

He was not, after all, mistaken in supposing that he and Dorothy had been followed. He waited until the newcomer came opposite the bush, then suddenly stretched out his long arms and grabbed the man’s feet away from under him.

There was an oath in a voice he thought he recognized. Next instant he was astride his victim and grinding his nose into the soft leaf-mould of the park.

Dorothy turned in her tracks, and arrived at Roger’s side just as he stood up and yanked his victim to a standing position.

‘Now, then,’ said Roger, who had hold of the man by the front of his shirt, ‘what do you think you’re doing, following me round?’

‘I don’t know you from Adam,’ snarled the man. ‘You let me alone, or——Why, I’m blowed if it isn’t Mr Hoskyn! You must have mistaken me, sir. I——’

Roger clapped a long, hard palm over his mouth, and told him very roughly to shut up.

‘You’re coming to the police station,’ he added. ‘There’s something damned fishy about you, Sim, and I’m going to find out what it is.’

‘You’d better leave me alone!’ said the man, immediately changing his tone. ‘You’ve got nothing to charge me with, nothing! This path’s a right of way. I’ve as good a right here as you have. Better, perhaps. I’m a Wandles man when I’m at home.’

‘Look here,’ said Roger, struck by a sudden idea, ‘you were the fellow, I’ll bet, who took a kick at me and did your best to settle my hash at Twickenham. Now you jolly well tell me why! And why did you sling me back my half-crown tip, dash it, at Whiteledge?’

‘I haven’t been in Twickenham. You’ve made a mistake. And you keep your hands off me, see, else I’ll have the law on you,’ returned Sim, more mildly but in the tone of what certainly seemed a good man’s righteous indignation. ‘I live in this village, I tell you. I’ve got a holiday from Whiteledge now Mr Lingfield’s dead, and I’m stopping at home for a bit. Why should I do any harm? I can’t help it if we run into each other, can I? It ain’t no choice of mine!’

‘Why did you swear the dead man was Mr Lingfield when you knew jolly well it wasn’t?
Do you mean to swear Mrs Denbies’ life away?’ demanded Roger wrathfully.

‘I’ve got nothing again’ Mrs Denbies, sir, and you know it,’ responded Sim. ‘But I’ll be on oath at the inquest, won’t I?’

They had to let him go. Dorothy watched him out of sight, and then said:

‘I’m positive it’s the same man, although it’s hard to be certain without the moustache he was wearing at the match.’