The Players And The Game (16 page)

‘On the way, sir.

Thirty seconds later it came in, hot and faintly brown, indistinguishable from tea. A policeman’s lot is not a happy one, Hazleton thought, as he telephoned his wife and listened to her expostulations about having cooked his dinner already. Really, though, he loved it.

Twenty-hundred hours. Brill was closeted with the post-master who dealt with the Sutton Willis post, a fussy little bald man who resented having been dragged away from a supper party and game of cards at home.

‘The last name we have for Batchsted Farm appears to be Mr L J Elliott. That was four years ago. I presume there has been no later occupier.’

‘Do you know the farm?’

‘Ah – yes.’

‘Then you know there’s been no later occupier, right?’

‘That is so, yes.’

‘What happened to Elliott?’

‘He ran – ah – a mushroom farm. Unsuccessful, I’m afraid. He emigrated, if recollection serves, to New Zealand.’

‘And what would happen to a letter addressed there? Suppose I wrote one, would it get delivered? The place is derelict, but there’s a letter box outside.’

‘I suppose, Sergeant – ah – Brill, this is sufficiently urgent to justify dragging me away from home on Saturday night–’

‘It’s a matter of life and death,’ Brill said grandiloquently.

‘Oh.’ The postmaster rubbed his bald head. ‘The truth is, I’m not quite sure.’

Brill said brutally, ‘We have reason to believe that letters for a Mr Abel Giluso have been delivered to this derelict farm recently. Anyone with half an eye can see nobody’s living there, the place is falling down. We want to know who delivered the letters, and why.’

‘I see. You want to know the entire procedure that would be followed.’

‘I’m glad it’s got through.’

‘The letters would arrive at Holting Post Office. They are then sorted by district. Letters for Sutton Willis would go to Upper Binsted sub post-office. They would be collected by the local postman, Mr Rogers, for delivery.’

‘So it’s Mr Rogers I want to see. What’s he like?’

‘Ted Rogers? He’s been in the service for twenty-two years. Rides around everywhere on his bike. I can’t remember the last time he had a day off for illness.’

‘“Rides around everywhere on his bike”,’ Brill mimicked savagely as he drove away. Anybody who did that sort of thing for twenty-two years was in his view a clot who wanted his brains testing. Brill had his own career mapped out. He had been a young sergeant, and he was going to be the youngest inspector on the county force. He would become Detective Chief Superintendent. That was top CID man in the county. And then? Apply for the job of Assistant Chief Constable in another county? Very likely. He was certain though, that he wouldn’t run as easy an office as the Toff. When he was top man he would make them jump.

Brill was a small-town man. He would have felt uneasy in Birmingham or Manchester, let alone London. There was too much of it, too many villains, and some of them dead clever. Rawley was just right for him. He had pounded a beat there before transfer to the C ID, and he really knew Rawley. He had driven around every bit of it, from the plush residential part where the business executives lived to the slums on the wrong side of the station. Brill shared two rooms and a sitting-room with another sergeant, and his landlady liked having policemen in the house. It would do until he got a rise or found the right sort of girl to marry. But although Rawley was home ground, the country was another matter. Driving along these little roads which all looked to him the same, passing dead-and-alive villages which lacked even a fish and chip bar, he couldn’t imagine how anybody in his senses wanted to live in them. The country was the sort of place where people would ride about on bicycles for twenty-two years.

The cottage was small and semi-detached. There were rose bushes in the front garden, honeysuckle and winter jasmine climbed the walls. A man with a weather-beaten face was polishing an old Morris car in a driveway at the side of the cottage. He looked up as Brill approached, and said, ‘What can I do for you?’ He spoke with a kind of burr that repelled the sergeant slightly. He was inclined to regard the standard urban accent of southern England as universal, and to deplore any departure from it as an affectation.

‘Mr Rogers? Brill, Rawley CID. Can I have a word with you?’

‘Hold on just a minute. Looks beautiful, doesn’t she? Nothing like real wax polish for protection.’ Brill, who regarded any car more than two years old as antique, nodded. Rogers led the way into the cottage, calling, ‘Mother, got a visitor.’

In the next breath he said, ‘Mind your head.’ Too late. Brill’s forehead had struck one of the blackened oak beams. Mrs Rogers, large and smiling, expressed sorrow and went out to make a cup of tea. The room was comfortable if you liked that kind of room, with an inglenook fireplace, bits of brass on the walls mingling with family photographs. The armchair Brill sat in was comfortable but shabby.

‘I thought you went round everywhere on a bicycle, didn’t realise you had a car.’

‘That’s right. I use the old bike for postal deliveries, never mind the weather. Mind you, I should have a van, but they wouldn’t give me one, say it doesn’t justify it. The car now, that’s for our personal use. Bought her a year ago. Had a bit of trouble with her at first, but she’s all right now. Makes all the difference, means we can get down to the sea any time we want to.’

‘Don’t know how anyone lives without one here.’ Brill offered a cigarette which was refused, lighted one himself. ‘Giluso, does that name mean anything to you? Abel Giluso, Batchsted Farm.’ When he saw the flare of alarm in the man’s eyes he knew he was home.

‘I don’t think I know the name.’

‘You know Batchsted Farm, of course. Derelict, isn’t it? How long since it was occupied?’

Rogers got up and turned away towards his wife, who was coming in the door with a tray containing tea and a cake. ‘He’s asking how long since Batchsted Farm was occupied, mother. About four years, wouldn’t you say?’

The tray went down on the table with a clatter. Mrs Rogers said something which might have been agreement. A cup of tea stood beside Brill, with a piece of cake.

‘You knew nobody was living at the farm. Why did you deliver letters there?’

The postman’s mouth opened and closed again. His wife said, ‘I told you.’

Rogers found his voice, ‘It wasn’t my business. The letters were addressed there, I put them in the box. Why shouldn’t I?’

‘Letters delivered to a place where there’d been nobody living for years and nobody could live because it was derelict,’ Brill said jeeringly. ‘Come on now, you’re not that big a fool. You knew somebody was going to pick them up.’

‘You’d best tell him,’ the woman said. Rogers stayed silent. She went over to the mantel above the fireplace, lifted the lid off a blue china hen and took out an envelope. ‘He got this in the post.’

The envelope was typed, and addressed to ‘Mr Rogers, Postman’, at his address. It was date-stamped ‘London, May 20’. Inside was a slip of paper, also typed. It said:

Please deliver all mail for A. Giluso, Batchsted Farm, East Road, Sutton Willis, to box in front of house. Shall be moving in later this year. Many thanks for your trouble.

‘There were two ten-pound notes came with it,’ she said. ‘That’s a lot of money to us.’

‘She didn’t want me to do it, but it was the car you see.’ Rogers was apologetic. ‘It came in very handy, paid for the work on the car. She was laid up, needed a new cylinder head.’

‘I told him no. But he said there would be no harm.’

Brill did not waste time on comment, ‘Have you had any other letters from him, received any more money?’

‘No.’

‘How many letters have you put in the box? Think. It’s important.’

‘I can’t remember, not for certain. A dozen perhaps. Not more.’

‘Did you notice the postmarks?’

‘I think they were all London.’

‘And you’re certain you never saw anyone picking them up?’

‘Yes. Look, what’s it all about? What’s he been up to, this man?’

Mrs Rogers said, ‘You don’t have to report this to the head postmaster, do you? It might mean Ted loses his pension.’

Her husband looked at Brill, and found no hope in his contemptuous stare. You should never have told him, mother, you should never have said about the money.’

‘I’ll have to make a report.’ Brill put the envelope into his briefcase. ‘This may be important evidence in the Allbright murder.’ Mrs Rogers gasped. ‘You should have stuck to your bicycle, Rogers. Cars are not for peasants.’

Twenty-thirty hours, Saturday evening. A fine evening, but clouds thickening and the sky growing dark. At just about the time that Brill was bumping his head on the Rogers’ oak beam, Hazleton was looking with approval at another country cottage. Or at least it was called a cottage, but ‘Oakdene Cottage’ was a small and very pretty seventeenth-century red-brick house, a couple of minutes’ drive out of Crampton village. A thick hedge concealed it from the road, and a piece of well-kept grass lay outside the hedge, protected by white chains and bollards from the parking of cars. A short drive led past a large barn on the right and scrupulously smooth lawn on the left up to the house. The effect was extremely neat. Hazleton liked it, as he liked the modern antique lantern hanging outside.

The balding man who came to the door acknowledged that he was Mr Darling. Hazleton was shown into a living-room where silver salt-cellars and sugar-sifters stood in one glass-fronted cabinet and pieces of china in another, newspapers were put tidily in a rack, and a little highly-polished table stood beside every armchair. To the arm of one chair was fixed what is called a TV tray, with a space on it for a cup and another for a plate. Mr Darling turned off the TV. Hazleton apologised for his intrusion.

‘Not at all. I like to eat my supper watching the TV, but the programmes get worse and worse, don’t you think?’

‘Can’t say I get all that much time to watch, sir. My wife likes the quiz programmes.’

‘Does she? Does she now?’ Mr Darling pondered on this, then took the tray off the chair and called ‘Isabel’ twice, the second time at the door. A tall thin woman with iron-grey hair came into the room.

‘My sister Isabel. This is Chief Inspector Hazleton, isn’t that right? Will you take any refreshment, Inspector?’

‘Thank you, sir. A drop of whisky and water.’

The grey-haired woman shook his hand. She had the beautiful clear skin of a child. ‘How do you do? Isn’t it glorious weather? We can’t complain about the summer, can we?’

‘Glorious. You’ve got a lovely garden here. Looks a picture.’

‘A most beautiful summer. It makes me think about the past when the weather was so much finer, don’t you think? But then everything about the past seems to me nicer than the present.’

‘Do you do the garden single-handed, ma’am? Or do you have help?’

‘I beg your pardon.’

Mr Darling, behind his sister, tapped his ear. Hazleton repeated the question more loudly. She gave a smile of great sweetness.

‘I’m sorry. I am a little deaf, I dare say you have gathered that. Yes, I do the garden entirely on my own. Jonathan is–’

‘I mow the lawn,’ her brother protested.

‘He mows the lawn. But there is a great deal else to do in the garden, even to do to the lawn. It is too dark to see now, but I wish I could show you my herbaceous border. The phlox are magnificent this year. Are you a keen gardener?’

Hazleton grinned. ‘I mow the lawn. That’s if I can’t get out of it.’

She gave her sweet uncertain smile again. ‘I shall leave you men to your business. I hope you will come again in the daylight and look at my phlox.’

When she had gone Darling said, ‘Isabel has been deaf for years. It’s getting worse, but she won’t admit it. She wears a hearing aid during the day, but as soon as I come home she puts it away. It can be trying at times, but she’s a wonderful woman. She keeps house for me here, runs this place entirely on her own. And does it very well.’

‘It’s a lovely place,’ Hazleton said, and meant it. But it was time to cut the cackle. ‘You’ve got a property called Batchsted Farm on your books. Can you tell me about it?’

‘I certainly can. You want to know why it’s in its present state, I suppose.’

‘That among other things. Anything you can tell me.’

‘Very well. But you’ll have to be prepared to sit back and listen for a couple of minutes. The last occupier was a man named Lionel Elliott, and the owner was Sir Lemuel Eames. Does that mean anything to you?’ Hazleton shook his head. Darling chuckled. ‘No reason why it should. Sir Lemuel lived here in Crampton, though it was before my time, then went off to Ireland. They were a wealthy family, Eames the brewer, you know. Sir Lemuel was a bit of a rake, or had been in his time, and the story was that Lionel Elliott was his illegitimate son. He lived in the same house as a sort of poor relation while Sir Lemuel was here. The name of the one was Lemuel John Eames, and the other was Lionel John Elliott. Rather a coincidence, wasn’t it? After Sir Lemuel went, Lionel stayed around and did all sorts of jobs – it was said that the old man made him an allowance. Then the arrangement was made by which Sir Lemuel let Lionel have Batchsted Farm, and do you know what he paid for it? Just ten pounds a year.’

Hazleton stifled a yawn. This cool room in the prevailing heat made him conscious that he was very tired. ‘Neither of them is around now, I take it.’

‘They are in another place.’ There was something at once prim and jovial about Mr Darling. ‘Lionel behaved like his father. He got a girl here pregnant, and went off to New Zealand. That was four and a half years ago, and Batchsted Farm has been empty ever since. First Sir Lemuel’s attitude was that his tenant would come back – you understand, this fiction was always kept up. In the meantime he refused to have anything done to the place, because he said Lionel could carry out and pay for all the necessary work when he came back. Then about two years ago Lionel died in New Zealand in a boating accident. He had married out there, and left a baby son. Six months later Sir Lemuel died, of drink it was said. He made no will, and his nearest relative was a cousin. But in the meantime the Elliott family claimed that Lionel’s son, whom he had named Lemuel, was the heir. They said they had documents to prove it. The case has been going on ever since. Nothing is decided. In the meantime the trustees are willing to lease Batchsted Farm, but not to spend a penny on it. You see the result. I am afraid I have tired you, Inspector.’