The Man with a Load of Mischief (6 page)

Sheila pouted. “Oliver's
theory
. About the murders. Haven't you been listening?”

“Pay no attention to Melrose,” said Lady Ardry, adjusting her fox-fur neck piece. “He never listens.” Melrose thought the little glass eyes of the fox were imploring him. From the moose to the fox. Had he become a lover of the wild?

Whether Melrose wanted to know or not, Sheila was leaning across the table toward him, pouring out Oliver's theory: “That it's someone with a grudge against Long Piddleton. Someone that was wronged by the town, and the wound festered and festered, and he's seen a way to get his revenge.”

“Why didn't he just toss his badge in the dirt?” asked Melrose, discarding the long ash from his cigar. “Gary Cooper did.” He was very fond of old westerns.

Sheila looked perplexed and Oliver stopped smiling cleverly.

“I told you, Sheila. Pay no attention to him. Pretend he's not here,” said Agatha, who then asked for another pink gin.

But Sheila persisted. “Oliver's writing a book, you know. A kind of fictionalized documentary about this sort of thing —”

“
This
sort of thing?” inquired Melrose, politely.

“
You
know, about especially weird sorts of murders —”

“Come on, Sheila, don't give it all away,” said Darrington. “You know I don't talk about works in progress.”

Agatha was looking grim. In Long Piddleton, he was her chief competition, having enjoyed a modest fame for several years as a writer of detective novels. The fame (much to her delight) was racing downhill after his last effort.

Oliver now asked, with a deprecating laugh, “Who was it said, ‘If I want to read a good book, I'll write one'?”

Probably you
, thought Melrose, turning his attention back to the moose.

Simon Matchett tried to act the part of the perfect host, though Melrose knew he held Darrington in contempt. “That's an interesting theory, Oliver. Someone with a grudge — but, surely, he would have to be psychotic.”

“Well, good God, he must be in any event, to go drowning people in beer and stuffing them up on wooden beams. The point is, these two men were perfect strangers to Long Pidd; now what
possible
motive —”

“You mean, we've been
saying
they're strangers,” put in Melrose, a little fed up with their assumptions masquerading as facts.

They all looked at him as if he'd just pulled out a snake from under the table.

“Whatever in the world do you mean, Mel?” asked Sheila. Melrose watched as she put her hand over Matchett's. Even old one-track-mind Sheila, who would gladly kill half the village to keep Oliver, could not resist this gesture.

“I think he's saying that someone in Long Pidd must have known them,” said Simon, lighting a cigar. He got it going and then said, smiling, “So who do you think did it, then?”

“Did what?”

Simon laughed. “The
murders
, old chap. Since you seem to think it was someone in our fair village.”

Why hadn't he kept his mouth shut? Now he would have to go along with the little game. “You, probably.”

They made, the group at the table, a rather nice little frieze: hands stopped in midair, mouths dropped open, as if the hinges had stuck; drinks paused at lips, cigarettes dangled. Indeed, the only one not locked into the still was Simon himself, who was laughing. “Marvelous! I could have been upholding the honor of my female guests, protecting them from the vile advances of Small.”

Melrose wondered at Matchett's facility for driving an insult round the bend and having it come back a compliment.

“I find your sense of humor revolting, Melrose,” said Agatha.

“It's always worse on an empty stomach, dear Aunt.”

D
etective Chief Inspector Richard Jury and his companion, Detective Sergeant Alfred Wiggins, alighted from the 2:05 from London into a cloud of steam, on the other side of which came forth a figure, spectrelike. When the steam cleared, the figure formed itself into Constable Pluck of the Northamptonshire constabulary.

As he stowed Jury's scarred valise in the rear of the bright blue Morris, Pluck said, “Superintendent Pratt's waiting for you in Long Piddleton. He asked me to apologize for not meeting you personal, sir.”

“Quite all right, Constable.” As they drove out of the station and into Sidbury, Jury asked, “Have you come up with any ideas as to why the body of Ainsley was stuck up there over the clock?”

“Oh, indeed, sir. It's obviously a maniac doing these murders.”

“A maniac, is that it?”

Wiggins sat like a stone in the rear seat, his nose-blowing testifying to his still being among the living, for the time being.

They came to a roundabout clogged with traffic, but this
didn't deter Pluck, who scooted right in, nearly sending a Morris Mini to an early death in the rear of a Ford Cortina. Seeing the blue cone on top of the police car, the horns pulled their punches. “Near miss, that was,” said Pluck, implying it was everyone's fault but his own. Then he took the Sidbury-Dorking Dean Road. Once beyond the twenty-five-mile-an-hour limit, Pluck hunched over the wheel, drove the speedometer up to fifty, and passed a lorry rounding a curve. He barely missed a black Mercedes coming from the other direction. As Jury brought his white-knuckled hand back from the dashboard, Pluck beamed and patted the instrument panel. “Nice little bugger, isn't she, sir? Just got her last month.”

“You might not have her next month, Constable, at the rate you're going.” Jury lit a cigarette. “I suppose the reporters have been thick on the ground over this.”

“Oh, God, yes. The ‘inn murders,' they've been calling them. And don't think people ain't half-worried, afraid they'll all be dead in their beds.”

“As long as they stay out of inn beds, perhaps they'll be all right.”

“True enough, sir. I wish they'd pick that bleedin' Vauxhall up and walk with it.” This was addressed to the old, green car before them, whose two ancient, chicken-necked occupants were driving at twenty miles per and making Pluck's life hell. He fumed and hunched down in the seat, apparently afraid to perform one more death-defying feat in the presence of his superior.

Long Piddleton took the shape of a mounded row of limestone cottages to Jury's left, a field full of cows to his right, then another row of cottages, these with thatch, and across the road a water splash through which one solitary duck meandered. Jury noticed, as they turned left, a woman coming hurriedly out of a small gate overgrown with creepers, shoving her arm into a Burberry. So intently was she watching their car, he half-expected her to thumb a lift.

 • • • 

“Must have thought, in London, we were going bonkers up here when you learned the circumstances,” said Superintendent Pratt.

“Quite honestly, I thought someone was kidding us.” Jury continued reading the statement made by the vicar, Denzil Smith. “What's this about a girl named Ruby Judd?” According to the vicar, his housemaid had not returned from a visit to Weatherington, where her parents lived.

“Ruby Judd. Ah, yes. I don't think it's anything to do with these murders. The thing is, Miss Judd is given to these, ah, extended vacations. Men, you know.”

“I see. Only it says here her parents haven't seen her at all. Is she still missing?” Pratt nodded.

“I suppose,” he said, “she'd got to tell the vicar some place respectable she's going. I don't know the girl, but —”

“Cor! I do!” said Pluck, with a lewd smile. “I think the superintendent's right there, Inspector.”

“I see.” But Jury didn't. The girl had been gone for nearly a week. “Now, what about the identification of this man Small?”

Pratt shook his head. “Nothing, yet. Small came in by train, got off at Sidbury, took the Sidbury-Dorking Dean bus. The stationmaster remembered him, but only vaguely, when we showed him Small's picture, and could only tell us that he got off the eleven
A.M.
from London. But that makes stops everywhere along the way, and we've not been able to get any leads as to where he got on. But if the man comes from London, Inspector—” and the superintendent spread his arms rather hopelessly.

“And the other one, Ainsley?”

“Came in by car. We traced the car back to a lot in Birmingham. You know the story. Buy the car, you've got the plates. The dealer was playing terribly, terribly dumb. ‘Ah, come on, guv, what's a businessman loike me to do? This chappie walks in with two hundred quid and wants the old banger . . .' et cetera, et cetera. Anyway, we're nowhere with the car and nowhere with the name. I assume it's not his own. Certainly no Ainsley at whatever bogus address he gave the dealer.”

“So you've got nothing there, either?”

Pratt blew his nose. “That's right. You know, of course, the Home Office has one of its labs set up in Weatherington. Everything there in case you need it.”

Jury found it hard to believe that with the expertise and scientific methods of the lab, they'd come up with nothing. They didn't need footprints in the sand or blood drops on the sill. “There must have been something — fiber, hair — the killer must have left something behind.”

Pratt shook his head. “Oh, there were hairs, for instance, those of the waitress and the fellow Small was having drinks with — Marshall Trueblood, I think — if you can tie them in. But no motive seems evident, none at all. We picked up marks, yes. But all elimination prints. People who had legitimate access to Small's and Ainsley's rooms, like the landlords and maids. As to the people there at the inn for dinner the night Small was killed, the bureau turned up prints of two already on file.” Pratt took back the folder he'd given Jury and adjusted his glasses. “This Marshall Trueblood and a woman named Sheila Hogg.” Pratt looked at Jury with a smile: “Pouf and a prostitute. Not prostitute, exactly. ‘Actress' might be more the way to put it. Blue movies, that sort of thing. Darling of the Dirty Squad.”

“Trueblood?”

“A bit of drugs here and there. But nothing big. Just supplied his friends. His digs got raided in Belgravia.”

Pratt was looking so tired that Jury suggested he go home to bed.

“Thanks, Inspector. I could use a bit of a rest.” He was still shuffling through the folder. “We know the signature on the register was Small's because he signed his dinner check, so we could compare. Someone could have written in Ainsley's name on the Jack and Hammer's register, though.”

“I assume not. That was the same name he used to rent the car, wasn't it?”

“True. I was just thinking that the murderer didn't want us to identify the two.”

“He hadn't time to do anything about the car, apparently.” Jury lit up a cigarette from his crumpled pack of Players. “What do you think?”

Pratt put his feet up on the desk and leaned back. “Look at it this way. Say this man Small comes in from London; maybe he's got himself a spot of bother there. Chummy follows him,
arranges to meet him in this godforsaken village, sees his opportunity when Small is stopping at the inn —”

“Did anyone else get off the train at Sidbury?”

“Several people. We're following that up.”

“So he follows Small and then kills Small
and
Ainsley?”

Pratt held up his hand. “I know. I know. Okay. Then Chummy lives here in Long Pidd, or close by. The two of them — Small and Ainsley — converge upon Long Pidd for the purpose of . . . well, we know not what. Some danger to Chummy, who gets wind of them and quickly dispatches them.”

Jury nodded. “That certainly makes more sense. It's conceivable that Ainsley was a stranger who happened through, since he was in a car. But Small? No one takes a bus from Sidbury to Long Piddleton who just happens to be passing through.' ” Pratt agreed. “So Small knew someone round about here, he must have. Or, at the very least, he must have
meant
to come here. Would it be jumping the gun to say they had a connection with one another?”

“I shouldn't think so. They both got themselves killed, now didn't they?”

 • • • 

After Pratt left, Jury sat at the desk studying the statements of the witnesses who had been present that evening at the Man with a Load of Mischief. His concentration was broken abruptly by the door to the small antechamber swinging open and the appearance of Pluck and an elderly woman. She wore a Burberry, and he recognized her as the woman he had seen as they were coming into Long Piddleton. There appeared to have been a brief scuffle with Pluck, who thought, rightly, that the villagers oughtn't to be allowed to burst into the inspector's office.

“Sorry, sir —” Pluck began. “It's Lady Ardry, sir.”

“You needn't apologize, Sergeant,” said Agatha. “The inspector will want to talk with me.” And she turned to Jury. “Inspector Swinnerton, is it?”

Swinnerton? “No madam, Inspector Richard Jury. You wished to speak with me?”

Her face fell when he told her his name, but she quickly recovered. “Obviously, Inspector, I haven't been wrestling with
your dogsbody here for the fun of it. Certainly I wished to speak with you. Or rather, it's you who should wish to speak with
me
. Who's taking notes? No need to sigh, Sergeant Pluck. If you and that Chief Constable what's-his-name in Northampton had your wits about you, there might have been no need to call in the Yard. The inspector here wants to hear my testimony, I'll wager.”

Jury instructed Pluck to ask Wiggins to come in and take notes, feeling a bit as if he'd received a reprimand from a rather severe old auntie. “Do go on, Lady Ardry.”

She sat down, smoothed her skirt, and cleared her throat. “I was the one to discover the body. Along with that girl, Murch,” she added, as if it were of no consequence, as if “that girl” were deaf, dumb, and blind. “I was on my way to the, ah, conveniences, when Matchett's girl, this Murch, burst from the cellar looking as chalky as the Seven Sisters and making noises and pointing downstairs — absolutely beside herself — and then she collapsed on a chair and moaned into her apron and I had to take matters into my own hands, while the others were rushing about, doing nothing but trying to cheer up Murch. I trooped downstairs and there he was, this Small person, and the absolute
reek
of beer everywhere —”