Fallen Into the Pit

One

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Well,” said Selwyn Blunden, settling his considerable bulk well back in the big chair, “that was an experiment that didn’t last long. Poor young devil!—but he was a devil! Pity, it seemed to be beginning rather well, so I heard from the manager fellow down on the site there.” He nodded toward the window which lay nearest to the ravaged valleys of the coal-site, still out of sight and sound, still held at bay from the Blunden fences, but creeping steadily nearer. “Said he was an excellent worker, excellent! Well, nobody’s going to get any more work out of him now—or have any trouble with him, either.”

“Except us,” said George. “My troubles with him seem to be only beginning.”

“Yes, in that way I suppose you’re right. Bad business altogether, bad for the village, unsettles everybody—bad for the boy himself, who after all might have made a decent fellow in the end—bad for your lad, and that young thing with the plaits, too, by God! How did your young man take it?”

“Oh, Dom’s all right. Stood up to it like a professional, but it’s had its effect, all the same, I wish it hadn’t. He’s taking far too proprietary an interest in the case for my liking.”

The big old man looked up under his bushy eyebrows and smiled through the thin clouds of smoke from his cigar. “What, enjoying the sensation, is he? You never can tell with children. These things simply don’t frighten them until some fool of a grown-up goes to the trouble to explain to them that they ought to be frightened.”

“Oh, not that, exactly. Dom’s rather past the stage of having to have these things explained to him. Consequently he’s quite capable of frightening himself, without any help from anyone. No, I wouldn’t say he’s enjoying it. But it happened to him, and he doesn’t want to let go of it until it’s all cleared up. Feels committed to it. Neither soft words nor fleas in his ear discourage him.”

“I see! Bound to admire his spirit, I must say, but damned inconvenient for you, I quite see that. One likes to have one’s family kept rather separate from things like murder.” He sighed deeply, and exhaled smoke like some wholesome old dragon in an unorthodox fairy tale. “Difficult times all round, Sergeant. I do appreciate your troubles. Got some of my own, but nothing to speak of by comparison. Result of that appeal should be through almost any day, and between you and me, win or lose, I’ll be glad to see it. Can’t carry this sort of war of attrition as well as I used to.”

“How do you think it’s going to turn out?” asked George with interest.

“Oh, it’s anybody’s guess—but I think the appeal will be allowed. Yes, I really expect it to go through. Site’s almost an uneconomic proposition as it is, after the run of bad luck they’ve had down there. Well, bad luck!—more likely over-confidence and over-haste, I’d hazard, if the truth be told. Put any amount of machinery out of action in a very short time, crashed one grab clean over and damned nearly killed the lad driving it—too much of it to be simply bad luck. It’s my opinion they were trying to rush this last stretch to make a good case for moving into my ground before the winter closed in, and were in such a hurry they took too many chances, and made a botch of it. But I don’t know! Their business, not mine. I’ll abide by the decision, this time, bad or good, but I admit I hope for success. Can’t expect me to enjoy the prospect of having the place torn up by the roots, can you, after all?”

George allowed that it would be rather a lot to expect. He suppressed a grin which would have done no discredit to Dominic, and asked demurely: “How’s the shooting this year? Client of mine tells me the pheasants have done rather well.”

The white moustache bristled for a moment, the bold blue eyes flashed, but he relaxed into laughter before their blueness had quite grown spearlike. “Ah, well, haven’t had too many taken yet, all things considered. And your job’s a bit like the confessional, isn’t it? So I won’t ask you for his name. Yes, they’ve done quite well. With only half a keeper, so to speak, one couldn’t ask more. Briggs is a complete anarchist, of course, won’t be ruled by owner, expert or predecessor, but he does rear the birds, heaven knows how. I’ve stopped interfering.”

“I heard the guns out for the first time yesterday evening. Sounded like autumn!”

“Oh, that would be Charles and a couple of friends he had down. I haven’t been out yet myself, haven’t had time. Perhaps this weekend we may get out together for a few hours—can’t let a whole week of October slip away without a single bird. But there won’t be any big parties this year. I can’t do with the social life, Sergeant Felse, it takes too much out of a man, and I’m not so young as I once was. And then, it needs a woman to take charge of the house, or there’s no heart in it—”

For a fleeting moment his blue eyes glanced upward at the wide, creamy expanse of wall opposite, where the best light in the room gathered and seemed to cluster upon a large, framed photograph. A woman, young but not very young, pretty but not very pretty, somehow too undecided to be very anything; and yet she had a soft, vague charm about her, too. A lot of fluffy light-brown hair, a formless yet pleasing face which looked as if it might yet amount to something if every line in it could be tightened up, a soft, petulant mouth, a string of carved imitation stones round her plump neck. Why should so vigorous, hard and arrogant an old man have lost any sleep over the flight of such a wife?

The sight of the picture never failed to astonish George with the same query. But human affections are something over which even the most practical people cannot be logical. Nobody likes to be left naked to laughter, either, even if leaves have fallen and cold winds come, especially if he happens to be the local panjandrum. And since the quick glance was never more than a momentary slipping of his guard, George was no wiser after it than he had been before. Maybe it was love, maybe only outraged dignity, that dug knives into the old man. Or maybe both had worn off long ago.

But to think of a woman with a face like that having the brains and patience to go quietly about from dealer to dealer, selling her jewellery, getting rid of her securities, telling them all—and all in confidence, of course!—that he was sending her to safety in America. If two of them had ever compared notes they would have known that she was collecting together more money than she could possibly be allowed to take out of the country; but of course every deal was private and confidential, and they never did compare notes. In a way, thought George irreverently, the old man ought to have been rather proud of her, she made a thumping good job of it. And he appreciates tactics, as a rule! Maybe, at that, it was from him she learned all she knew.

But this was not what he had come for. He pulled his mind sharply back from this most fascinating sidetrack, and asked: “You’re exhibiting at the Sutton Show, I suppose?”

“Yes, hoping to. Sending some stuff down by road, with Hollins. Pretty good prospects, I think.” He began to talk stock, his eyes kindling, and George let him run for a while, though most of it went past him and left no mark.

“Hollins came to see you about the arrangements, I understand, last Wednesday night. He says he was here about nine. Do you remember it?”

“Yes, of course. Came just after I turned the news on, I remember. Stayed maybe a quarter of an hour or twenty minutes. He was away before half-past nine, at any rate. Rather a dull stick, young Chris,” said the old man, looking up suddenly under his thick eyebrows with a perfectly intelligent appreciation of the meaning of these questions, “though a good sheep-farmer. Not at all a likely suspect for murder, one would think.”

“None of ’em are,” agreed George. “All next-door-neighbors, everybody knowing everybody, murder’s an impossibility, that’s all about it. Only alternative to thinking nobody could have done it is thinking anybody could have done it— and that’s a thing one hopes not to have to face.”

“It’s a thing nine out of ten of us couldn’t possibly face. We know enough to shut our eyes tight when it comes along, and keep ’em shut until it’s gone by. It’s that or lose hold of every mortal thing. But still—I’d put Hollins well down the list of possibilities, myself.”

“No one will be more pleased than I shall,” agreed George, “if I can account for every minute of his evening, and put him clean out of it. You’ve accounted for twenty minutes or so, and that’s something. What sort of frame of mind did he seem to be in? Just as usual? Not agitated at all? Not even more withdrawn than usual?”

“Didn’t notice anything out of the way. He talked business in the fewest words that would cover it, as always. He never talked much. Came, and said what he had to say, and went, and that was that. No, there wasn’t anything odd about him. Maybe a bit brisker than usual, if anything. He was a fellow who liked to sit and light a pipe as a sort of formal preliminary to conference, and come to the point briefly, but at his leisure. This time he got off the mark without smoking. That’s positively all there is to be said about the interview, as far as I remember.”

“He didn’t say anything about where he was going when he left you? Nothing about any calls intended on the way home?”

“No, nothing that I remember.”

“Oh, well—thanks for your help, sir.” George rose, and old Blunden’s heavy bulk heaved itself out of the armchair to accompany him to the door. Again he noticed the ageing thrust of the big shoulders, the slight stoop, for all the glint of his eye which had still more devilry in it than Charles could compass in the whole range of his moods.

“I won’t ask you anything,” said Blunden, leading the way through the sudden dimness of a hall which faced away from the morning sun. “But I don’t mind telling you, Sergeant Felse, that I feel very concerned for that poor woman Hollins married. Not much of the truth ever came out, but I gathered what sort of a life young Schauffler had been leading her, all the same. Wish you luck all the more when I think about her. I do indeed! The sooner this case is closed, once for all, the better I’ll be pleased.”

“So will I,” said George with even more fervor; and went away very thoughtfully to find Jim Tugg, who was leaning on one of his hurdles at the lambing-fold down in the bowl of the fields beyond the farm, chewing a grass and contemplating a number of well-grown and skittish Kerry Hill lambs. He appeared to be doing nothing beyond this, but in fact he was calculating the season’s chances, and putting them pretty high, if nothing went wrong with the weather. He was dead sure he’d got the best tup he’d seen for years, and was looking forward to an average higher than last year. He was not thinking of the police at all, and even when he looked up from the black knees and black noses of the fat young ewes to the incongruous navy-blue figure of George, the contemplative expression of his eyes changed only very slowly and reluctantly.

George was nonetheless familiar by now with this change. In most people it happened instantaneously, the brief flare of intensified awareness, and then the quick but stealthy closing of the door upon him, with an almost panicky quietness, so that he should not hear it shut to. In Jim the pace was slower, and only the eyes changed, the rest of the dark face never tightening by one muscular contraction; and in Jim the closing of the door had a deliberation which did not care so much about being observed. The collie stopped bossing the sheep about, and came and stood at his knee, as if he had called it.

“Well, Sergeant?” said Jim. “Thought of some more questions?”

“Just one,” said George, and found himself a leaning-place on the hurdles before he launched it. He wanted more than an answer to it; he wanted to understand the expression that went with the answer, but in the end all he could make of Jim’s face was a mild surprise when he asked at length:

“That green door in the orchard-wall up at the house— Which day did you paint it?”