Faintley Speaking

Chapter Six

MYSTERY MEN

‘When I burned in desire to question them further,

they made themselves air, into which they vanished.’

shakespeare – Macbeth

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‘Dear me,’ said Mrs Bradley, meeting Mark at the entrance to the dining-room, ‘and what does this betoken?’

‘We’ve finished breakfast,’ replied Mark, ‘and we’re going home to-day.’ He glanced down at his best trousers. ‘Everything’s packed, and we’re going out for a bit of a walk before lunch, and then, directly lunch is over, we shall be off. I shan’t be sorry.’

‘I, too, have had my fill of Cromlech,’ Mrs Bradley agreed. ‘A pleasing village, but, on the whole, rather lacking in amenities.’

‘Saw it all the first day,’ muttered Mark. ‘There’s nothing decent to do except bathe, and the tide isn’t always right for that, and if you take a boat out you’ve got to have a boatman. Now, if I’d gone to France…’ He proceeded to give a colourful description of the delights which he and Ellison had envisaged.

‘France,’ said Mrs Bradley reminiscently. ‘Ah, yes, so you told me before. I shall fly to Lascaux to-morrow… at least, not all the way to Lascaux, but to the airport nearest to it.’

‘To-morrow? Oh, I say, you are lucky!’

‘When does school reopen?’

‘Wednesday, worse luck. Still, I shall see Ellison again. They’ve gone to Jersey.’

‘Indeed? Well, you had better solicit your dear parents’ permission to come with me to France. It will not be a long visit because neither of us can spare the time, but we could be back by Monday evening.’

‘I say!’ shouted Mark. ‘Do you mean it?’ He rushed off at once, and brought his father back with him. The parental blessing was evoked, and the Torbury aerodrome hopped one calm, one excited and one puzzled passenger to Northolt. There a specially commissioned police car rushed them to Heath Row.

‘But I can’t see what all this is in aid of,’ said Laura plaintively to the driver, who happened to be her fiancé, Detective-Inspector Gavin of Scotland Yard. ‘What’s cooking?’

‘Mrs Croc. did not confide in us. She said she was tired of the Faintley case. We’re not in on it officially, but off the record we’ve made a few inquiries about the Faintleys, as they used to live in London —’

‘Anything interesting about them?’

‘Damn-all. Just an ordinary suburban family respected if not loved. Bombed out in 1941. Pop was a shop steward, daughter trained as a teacher. Otherwise, as we say in our patois, nothing known.’

‘What do you make of it?’

‘I’d have said cosh and grab, but the fact that the handbag and that expensive watch were left behind by the murderer effectively disposes of that theory, and there was no attempt at funny business, according to the medical evidence at the first inquest… just the one clean thrust of the Commando knife. The chap was no bungler, I’ll say that for him. He just took a dislike to her, apparently, and she’d had it. I wish we knew why. I imagine your boss has rumbled something, but she’s not likely to tell us what it is until she’s pretty sure. Where’s she actually making for?’

‘Lascaux. The caves, you know.’

‘Oh, ah? Tells us a lot, doesn’t it? Still, we’ve got standing orders from the high-ups to afford her any facilities she wants, and apparently she wants Air France, and here we are!’

‘I’ve decided to leave you to your own devices for a few days, dear Laura,’ said Mrs Bradley, as they stood waiting for the aeroplane. ‘Don’t get into mischief. Remember that I place a high value upon your services. Oh, and our good Gavin, who has acquired a short term of leave of absence, may occupy my room at Cromlech while I’m away.’

‘He can’t. He’s going to drive me back to-night and stay the night, and then I’m pushing him off to Scotland to visit his mother. I can’t have him around while I’m so busy.’

‘Well, be reasonable in carrying out your plans. I realize that nothing will keep you away from that cliff-top house where you found the body. Now that the police have concluded their investigations there, I have an instinctive feeling—’

‘You’re right, at that. I did think of infesting the place again when I get back. I don’t suppose there’s a thing to find out, and, even though the police pretend to have given up crawling all over it, I daresay some of them have been told to check the visitors. One thing, it’s such a brute of a climb to get in the only way one can… because they’re sure to have filled up that gap that young Mark and I made with our battering ram… that I don’t suppose many people will trouble themselves to go there, especially as the exact locality hasn’t been made too public.’

‘Well, I do not propose to fuss, but I would like to point out that the house may have been empty the last time you went there, or it may only have seemed empty. It is possible that you might be recognized.’

‘And you think it won’t be healthy up there for snoopers? I know. I’ll look out for myself, so you need not worry.’

‘I have no intention of worrying, child. Good luck to your hunting. Not that I think there will be very much to find out.’

Laura was greatly attached to her boat, the Canto Five, and spent half an hour or so in messing about checking petrol, oil, stores, and the engine before she took in her anchor, so that it was a quarter to three on the following afternoon before she got away from her anchorage. Her scheme was twofold. She had a desire to see the picturesque little village of Wedlock, which lay about two miles in from the coast, and she also had a theory that, once she had rounded the tremendous headland on which the mystery house was built, it might be possible to find a way up to the house without the fatiguing climb which had taken her and Mark to the house when she had discovered Miss Faintley’s body. There must, she argued, be an easier way up than either of the paths they had used. Fuel and provisions had had to be taken to the place when it was used as a school. Therefore there must be a road.

It was pleasant cruising weather. She put out to sea and gave the rocky headland a wide berth. Then as she came round the great bend, she began to edge in towards the shore. As she had expected from her study of map and chart, the headland sloped down on the north-east side to a sandy bay. She made for the middle of this, felt her way in, and, at three fathoms, paid out plenty of chain to hold on the sandy bottom, took to the dinghy and rowed herself ashore. She beached the little boat well up on an incoming tide, and took careful stock of her surroundings.

There were a good many people on the beach, and there was another cabin cruiser anchored some distance off, too far away for Laura to be able to take stock of it. A low seawall bounded the sand, and, from it, a steep road, possible, however, for cars, went up from the sea towards some pleasantly-situated houses. Half-way up this road another branched off at right-angles and was marked: Cromlech Down School Only. Private.

‘This is it,’ thought Laura. Firmly grasping the ash-plant which she had brought with her in the dinghy, she began to ascend the slope. The surface was good, and a series of serpentine windings kept the gradients at about (she judged) one in nine. The bends made the walk a long one, and she decided that she must have covered the better part of six miles before she came in sight of the house she was looking for. On this side it was fenced in with iron palings in which were set the main double gates. A derelict lodge, with vacant windows and part of the roof off, flanked these and had obviously been unoccupied for years, but the gates, although they were locked, offered no obstacle to the tall and agile Laura. She put her ash-plant between the bars and then climbed over, aware that if anyone happened to be looking out, she was in full view from the house. She picked up her stick and sauntered forward.

The gardens, if such they could be called, were, like the part of them that she and Mark had already seen, very much neglected. She perambulated unkempt paths, keeping the house in view but circumnavigating it, until she came round to the side where she had made entrance to find the body. There was the straight path which, when she had seen it last, had been carefully smoothed and sanded. It was much trampled now, probably, she thought, by policemen’s boots. She wondered whether the police had discovered any clues to the identity of Miss Faintley’s assailant, and she left the path to inspect the bush beneath which Miss Faintley’s head had been thrust. It was likely that the woman had been struck down on the path, and then the path resanded to obscure footprints and perhaps to cover up blood. The painstaking police no doubt had swept the path, taken a sample, and put the sand back.

She turned away, walked back to the path and followed it up to the house. At the great front door she knocked. The reverberation of emptiness came booming at her. She listened intently, but, once the sound of her own knocking had died, the silence, except for screaming gulls whom the noise, most likely, had disturbed, and the far-off sound of the sea on the headland rocks, settled down again even as, after a minute or two, the gulls returned to their fastnesses, the ledges and clefts of the cliff.

Laura went on round the house and found the window which (presumably) the police had broken in order to force an entrance. The catch was temptingly exposed. Laura was not the person to ignore a challenge. She pushed back the catch, opened the window and inserted her head. In a very loud voice she called out: ‘Hullo, there! Anybody in?’ There was no answer. A sudden breeze blew past her ear and shut an open door with a bang which sounded loud enough to bring down the house.

‘Hope it hasn’t jammed!’ thought Laura. She waited for a few moments to see whether the slam of the door would bring anybody to find out what had happened, but everything remained still, so she climbed in through the window, determined to tour the house.

It was a big place. Besides the kitchen regions and a large, much-scrawled-upon room which seemed to speak of bored children on wet afternoons and which was completely unfurnished even to the bare floorboards much trampled, again, she supposed, by policemen, there were seven other rooms on the ground floor. Only one of these, the curtained room she had seen on her first visit, was furnished. It contained a carpet, a suite of upholstered furniture, several small chairs, a large table (much scratched), a rusty metal filing-cabinet which she opened and found to be empty, and a case of pressed ferns. This was fastened to the wall and each exhibit was labelled, both botanically and in English, thus:4

Polypodium Vulgare

Polystichum Lonchitis

Trichomanes Radicans

Asplenium Ceterach

Asplenium Septentrionale

Lastrea Filix-Mas

Polypodium Phegopteris

Asplenium Fontanum

Asplenium Marinum

Athyrium Filix-Foemina

Botrychium Lunaria

Blechnum Spicant

Lastreas (Nephrodium)

Ophioglossum Vulgatum

Osmunda Regalis

Common Polypody

Holly Fern

British Fern

Scaly Spleenwort

Forked Spleenwort

Male Fern

Beech Fern

Smooth-Rock Spleenwort

Sea Spleenwort

Lady Fern

Moonwort

Hard Fern

Buckler Fern

Adder’s-Tongue Fern

Royal Fern

‘Shades of the prison house!’ said Laura aloud, thinking of her own schooldays. ‘Wonder why they didn’t take it with them?’ The specimens were indeed remarkably well preserved and had been carefully – one would say lovingly – mounted, and the printing, carried out in Indian ink, was both artistic and neat. The other downstairs rooms having provided nothing of interest, Laura decided to try the rooms on the first floor. These did not coincide in every case with the ground floor rooms, and she concluded that some had been considerably altered, possibly to provide dormitories. This theory was substantiated by her discovery of a row of small washbasins, five tiny bathrooms with partitions between them which did not reach the ceiling, and, opposite them, a row of water-closets.

There was a third storey to the house but this yielded nothing of the slightest interest; neither did two attics at the top of a small wooden staircase. Bored by her fruitless exploration, Laura went to one of the attic windows. It was heavily cobwebbed, and she was about to brush aside some of this obscurity to look out upon the view when she drew back. The attic window overlooked the part of the garden between the house and the ruined lodge, and two men were approaching.

‘Holiday sightseers,’ was her first impression. ‘Wonder whether they’ve come to see the spot marked X or not? I didn’t know the news was all that much public’

She knelt on the boarded floor and did her best to peer through the window without getting too near the glass. But the men were no casual holiday-makers in spite of their hatlessness and careless holiday clothes. They came straight up to the house and one of them thundered on the door just as she had done, but even louder.

She crept to the top of the attic staircase and prayed that no creaking board would betray her, for, after a very short interval, the men let themselves in. She could hear their voices in the hall. Then they went into one of the rooms. She heard the door being shut.

Clutching her ash-plant, she began to creep down the stairs. They could hardly be Miss Faintley’s murderers, she decided, to come boldly and in broad daylight like this, but they obviously had some right to be in the house, which she most certainly had not. It would entail no end of awkward explanation if she were caught on the premises. They might even be police officers, although she did not think that plain-clothes men would wear cricket shirts, sweaters and grey flannel bags. Whoever they were, it behoved her to get away as circumspectly and as quickly as she could.

There was no sound of voices when she came to the foot of the staircase. She knew which room the men were in because it was the only one in which the door was shut. She herself had been careful to leave all the inside doors open as she had found them. Taking special care, and thankful that she was still wearing the rubber-soled shoes she used on the boat, she made her way to the kitchen and climbed out of the open window. She did not attempt to close it. The men, if they investigated, must think that it had been left as it was by the police.

Keeping on the grass, she made for the bushes, and, stooping very low, crept round them until she was out of line with the windows behind which lurked the two mysterious visitors. As she went, she pondered. The men had obviously been furnished with a key to the front door. Why, then, she wondered, had they troubled to beat that thunderous tattoo? The only explanation was that they had tried to find out, just as she had, whether the house was inhabited. But if they had the right to enter, and were furnished with the means of entry, why did they need to find out whether the house was occupied or empty? Did they expect that the police were still in possession?

As there seemed to be no obvious answer to this question she decided to wait in hiding for a bit and find out whether there was anything more to be learnt. The one furnished room intrigued her. As there was no bed, it did not seem likely that it had been a caretaker’s lodging. Still thinking deeply, she reached the crumbling lodge. It seemed to offer as good a bit of cover as anywhere else, and, although the roof was damaged, it certainly offered some prospect of shelter from the storm which was obviously gathering, for the sky had become overcast and already a few spots of heavy summer rain were splashing down on her head.

The floors of the lodge had disappeared. The interior was rank with nettles and bright with patches of willowherb. Laura, in her seafaring slacks, was able to cope with the nettles. She waded through them to shelter and settled down to keep watch from one of the broken windows which looked towards the house. She did not need to wait long. At the end of about a quarter of an hour the men appeared. By this time it was pouring with rain, and, to her great disappointment, both men were wearing large bandana handkerchiefs which partly obscured their faces.

‘Shades of Jesse James!’ thought Laura, vexed. ‘Now I shall never be able to recognize them if ever I meet them again! What a nuisance that attic window was all cobwebs!’ Their heads, too, were bent against the wind which was blowing full in their faces, and this made any chance of memorizing their appearance even more difficult. To her great interest, however, they were carrying a large package draped in one of the curtains which had been up at the windows of the room which they had entered.

Laura gave them another quarter of an hour. Then she went back to the house, climbed in, and went straight to the furnished room to try to identify their burden. This was easy enough. Where the case of ferns had been was an empty wall with only the plug-marks showing.

‘Curiouser and curiouser,’ thought Laura. ‘What on earth can they want with that?’

She left the house at once… by the front door, this time… and trotted back to the lodge. Here she climbed the gate and ran down the winding slope to the shore. She had no fear of catching up with the men and so betraying that she had been to the house. They had more than twenty minutes’ start of her and had been walking as fast as the wind and their burden would allow.

Neither was there any sign of them on the beach. Moreover the other cruiser had gone. There might be no significance in this, as there was no evidence that the two men had come from the cruiser. It might have belonged to anyone. Laura returned in her own boat to Cromlech, and remembered, too late, that she had not been to the village of Wedlock after all. Next day she reported to Vardon that the case of ferns had been carried away from the house, and gave what description she could of the two men.

‘Fit hundreds of people,’ said Vardon. ‘Still, you might be able to pick them out again if you saw them.’

Laura thought this very unlikely, and could see that he did, too. She half expected a reprimand for going alone to the house, but this did not come.

‘Funny about the ferns,’ she said, hoping for information.

‘Funny case altogether, Miss Menzies. What’s Mrs Bradley up to? We heard she was going to France.’

‘She’s gone. I don’t know what the idea is. We’ll know more when she comes back. She’s taken young Mark Street along with her. I expect them back on Monday night.’

‘I see. Your two men might interest Detective-Inspector Darling. He’s lost a couple of rather interesting brothers!’

To Mark the whole of the journey was a fairy-tale told for his benefit. When at last they reached the caves Mrs Bradley put him in charge of a guide and went on her own tour of inspection. It was not her presence that Mark needed. Contrary to her satellites’ impression that she had received a kind of spirit message that Lascaux would provide the solution of their problem, or even the most faint, elusive clue that Miss Faintley’s mysterious activities and the riddle of her death were in some way connected with the prehistoric art of the caves, she had acted merely in obedience to one of her strongest emotions, a deep, abiding, amused and tender love of small boys. Mark, she sensed, had been much more bitterly resentful of and disappointed at the failure of his plan to visit France than his parents realized. Resentfulness and disappointment, she was well aware, do not strengthen character at Mark’s age; she considered it doubtful whether they did at any age. The Faintley case would make no further progress, she surmised, until school reopened and Miss Faintley’s life could be regarded from another angle. The opportunity was present, therefore, to remove the poison from Mark’s mind. True, she was not the no-doubt gallant and resourceful Ellison, but perhaps to fly to France instead of going by sea and train would compensate somewhat for that.

That it had more than compensated she was soon aware, and the boy’s silent ecstasy enhanced her own pleasure in the trip. The custodians of Lascaux knew her, for she had spent several months there researching into the psychological significance of the Aurignacian cave-decorations and in attempting to read their symbolism in the light of modern psycho-analytical knowledge, so they allowed her to wander at will while she sought out her own favourite paintings, including that of the so-called Apocalyptic Beast with his forward-pointing horns, his watchful head, and his attitude of alertness, his firm legs planted and yet a-quiver, like those of a hunter’s hound. There was nothing dog-like, however, about this sagging-bellied, demoniacal creature with the Indian bullock’s bulge on his shoulders and his tremendously-muscled thighs. He was master, not servant, in the cave.

When she rejoined Mark she had a short talk with the guide, and obtained an item of intelligence which she filed in her mind as being too good to be true. She had guessed that the prehistoric caves, not Lascaux, particularly, but many of those which could be found all along the Dordogne, had been used during the war by the French Resistance. What she learned now was that a man called Bannister had taken a prominent part in the Resistance, having been, in fact, a British Intelligence officer. The name stuck. Mark, who had almost no French, picked it up, too.

‘He said Monsieur Bannistaire,’ he remarked. ‘Didn’t mean Mr Bannister, did he?’

‘I dare not suppose that he meant your Mr Bannister, child.’

‘Well, Bannister’s been here, to Lascaux. It wasn’t just that he’d bought the book. I mean, you could tell, just like when they give you a jogger lesson on some place either they’ve been to or they haven’t. You can always tell. Besides, why should a maths beak tell us about a thing like this unless he’d been here?’

‘Sound arguments, logically expressed, child.’

‘But why caves?’ demanded Laura when they got back.

‘Ferns might grow in them,’ Mrs Bradley cryptically replied. ‘From what I hear from our indefatigable police officers, ferns would appear to be the foliage, if not entirely the root, of the matter.’