Grave Mistake

Chapter 7: Graveyard (I)

i

Mr. Markos had stayed at Keys for only a short time after Alleyn had gone. He had quietened down quite a lot and Verity wondered if she had turned into one of those dreadful spinsters of an all too certain age who imagine that any man who shows them the smallest civility is making a pass.

He had said goodbye with a preoccupied air. His black liquid gaze was turned upon her as if in speculation. He seemed to be on the edge of asking her something but, instead, thanked her for “suffering” him to invite himself, took her hand, kissed his own thumb and left her.

Verity cut roses and stood them in scalding water for half an hour. Then she tidied herself up and drove down to St. Crispin’s.

It was quite late in the afternoon when she got there. Lengthening shadows stretched out toward gravestones lolling this way and that, in and out of the sunshine. A smell, humid yet earthy, hung on the air and so did the sound of bees.

As Verity, carrying roses, climbed the steps, she heard the rhythmic, purposeful squelch of a shovel at work. It came from beyond the church and of course she knew what it was: Bruce at his task. Suddenly she was filled with a liking for Bruce: for the direct way he thought about Sybil’s death and his wish to perform the only service he could provide. It no longer seemed to matter that he so readily took to sentimental manifestations and she was sorry she had made mock of them. She thought that of all Sybil’s associates, even including Prunella, he was probably the only one who honestly mourned her. I won’t shy off, she thought. When I’ve done the flowers, little as I like graves, I’ll go and talk to him.

The Vicar’s wife and Mrs. Field-Innis and the Ladies Guild, including Mrs. Jim, were in the church and well advanced with their flowers and brass vases. Verity joined Mrs. Jim, who was in charge of Bruce’s lilies from Quintern and was being bossily advised by Mrs. Field-Innis what to do with them.

An unoccupied black trestle stood in the transept: waiting for Sybil. The Ladies Guild, going to and fro with jugs of water, gave it a wide berth as if, thought Verity, they were cutting it dead. They greeted Verity and spoke in special voices.

“Come on, Mrs. Jim,” said Verity cheerfully, “let’s do ours together.” So they put their lilies and red roses in two big jars on either side of the chancel steps, flanking the trestle. “They’ll be gay and hopeful there,” said Verity. Some of the ladies looked as if they thought she had chosen the wrong adjectives.

When Mrs. Jim had fixed the final lily in its vase, she and Verity replaced the water jugs in their cupboard.

“Police again,” Mrs. Jim muttered with characteristic abruptness. “Same two, twice today. Give me a lift up there. Got me to let them in, and the big one drove me back. I’ll have to tell Miss Prunella, won’t I?”

“Yes, I expect you must.”

They went out into the westering sunlight, golden now and shining full in their faces.

“I’m going round to have a word with Bruce,” said Verity. “Are you coming?”

“I seen him before. I’m not overly keen on graves. Gives me the creeps,” said Mrs. Jim. “He’s making a nice job of it, though. Jim’ll be pleased. He’s still doubled up and crabby with it. We don’t reckon he’ll make it to the funeral but you never know with lumbago. I’ll be getting along, then.”

The Passcoigne plot was a sunny clearing in the trees. There was quite a company of headstones there, some so old that the inscriptions were hard to make out. They stood in grass that was kept scythed but were not formally tended. Verity preferred them like that. One day the last of them would crumble and fall. Earth to earth.

Bruce had got some way with Sybil’s grave and now sat on the edge of it with his red handkerchief on his knee and his bread and cheese and bottle of beer beside him. To Verity he looked like a timeless figure and the grave-digger’s half-forgotten doggerel came into her head.

His shovel was stuck in the heap of earth he had built up and behind him was a neat pile of small sticky pine branches, sharpened at the ends. Their resinous scent hung on the air.

“You’ve been hard at work, Bruce.”

“I have so. There’s a vein of clay runs through the soil here and that makes heavy going of it. I’ve broken off to eat my piece and wet my whistle and then I’ll set to again. It’ll tak’ me all my time to get done before nightfall and there’s the pine branches foreby to line it.”

“That’s a nice thing to do. How good they smell.”

“They do that. She’d be well enough pleased, I daresay.”

“I’m sure of it,” said Verity. She hesitated for a moment and then said: “I’ve just heard about your link with Captain Carter. It must have been quite a shock for you — finding out after all these years.”

“You may weel ca’ it that,” he said heavily. “And to tell you the truth, it gets to be more of a shock, the more I think aboot it. Ou aye, it does so. It’s unco queer news for a body to absorb. I don’t seem,” said Bruce, scratching his head, “to be able to sort it out. He was a fine man and a fine officer, was the Captain.”

“I’m sure he was.”

“Aweel,” he said, “I’d best get on for I’ve a long way to go.”

He stood up, spat on his hands and pulled his shovel out of the heap of soil.

She left him hard at work and drove herself home.

Bruce dug through sunset and twilight and when it grew dark lit an acetylene lamp. His wildly distorted shadow leapt and gesticulated among the trees. He had almost completed his task when the east window, representing the Last Supper, came to life and glowed like a miraculous apparition, above his head. He heard the sound of a motor drawing up. The Vicar came round the corner of the church using a torch.

“They’ve arrived, Gardener,” he said: “I thought you would like to know.”

Bruce put on his coat. Together they walked round to the front of the church.

Sybil, in her coffin, was being carried up the steps. The doors were open and light from the interior flooded the entrances. Even outside, the scent of roses and lilies was heavily noticeable. The Vicar in his cassock welcomed his guest for the night and walked before her into her hostelry. When he came away, locking the door behind him, he left the light on in the sanctuary. From outside the church glowed faintly.

Bruce went back to her grave.

A general police search for Claude Carter had been set up.

In his room up at Quintern, Alleyn and Fox had completed an extremely professional exploration. The room, slapped up twice a week by Mrs. Jim, was drearily disordered and smelt of cigarette smoke and of an indefinable and more personal staleness. They had come at last upon a japanned tin box at the bottom of a rucksack shoved away at the top of the wardrobe. It was wrapped in a sweater and submerged in a shirt, three pairs of unwashed socks and a wind-jacket. The lock presented no difficulties to Mr. Fox.

Inside the box was a notebook and several papers.

And among these a rough copy of the plan of the room in the stable yard, the mushroom shed and the point marked X.

ii

“Earth to earth,” said the Vicar, “ashes to ashes, dust to dust. In sure and certain hope…”

To Alleyn, standing a little apart from them, the people around the grave composed themselves into a group that might well have been chosen by the Douanier Rousseau: simplified persons of whom the most prominent were clothed in black. Almost, they looked as if they had been cut out of cardboard, painted and then endowed with a precarious animation. One expected their movements, involving the lowering of the coffin and the ritual handful of earth, to be jerky.

There they all were and he wondered how many of them had Sybil Foster in their thoughts. Her daughter, supported on either side by the two men now become her guardians-in-chief? Verity Preston, who stood nearby and to whom Prunella had turned when the commitment began? Bruce Gardener, in his Harris tweed suit, black arm-band and tie, decently performing his job as stand-in sexton with his gigantic wee laddie in support? Young Mr. Rattisbon, decorous and perhaps a little tired from standing for so long? Mrs. Jim Jobbin among the representatives of the Ladies Guild, bright-eyed and wooden-faced? Sundry friends in the county. And finally, taller than the rest, a little apart from them, impeccably turned out and so handsome that he looked as if he had been type-cast for the role of distinguished medico — Dr. Basil Schramm, the presumably stricken but undisclosed fiancé of the deceased and her principal heir.

Claude Carter, however, was missing.

Alleyn had looked for him in church. At both sittings of the inquest Claude had contrived to get himself into an inconspicuous place and might have been supposed to lurk behind a pillar or in a sort of no-man’s-land near the organ but out here in the sunny graveyard he was nowhere to be seen. There was one large Victorian angel, slightly lopsided on its massive base but pointing, like Agnes in David Copperfield, upward. Alleyn trifled with the notion that Claude might be behind it and would come sidling out when all was over, but no, there was no sign of him. This was not consistent. One would have expected him to put in a token appearance. Alleyn wondered if by any chance something further had cropped up about Claude’s suspected drug-smuggling activities and he was making himself scarce accordingly. But if anything of that sort had occurred Alleyn would have been informed.

It was all over. Bruce Gardener began to fill in the grave. He was assisted by the wee lad, the six-foot adolescent known to the village as Daft Artie, he being, as was widely acknowledged, no more than fifty p. in the pound.

Alleyn, who had kept in the background, withdrew still further and waited.

People now came up to Prunella, said what they could find to say and walked away, not too fast but with the sense of release and buoyancy that follows the final disposal of (however deeply loved) the dead. Prunella shook hands, kissed, thanked. The Markos pair stood behind her and Verity a little farther off.

The last to come was Dr. Schramm. Alleyn saw the fractional pause before Prunella touched his offered hand. He heard her say: “Thank you for the beautiful flowers,” loudly and quickly and Schramm murmur something inaudible. It was to Verity that Prunella turned when he had gone.

Alleyn had moved further along the pathway from the grave to the church. It was flanked by flowers lying in rows on the grass, some in cellophane wrappings, some picked in local gardens and one enormous professional bouquet of red roses and carnations. Alleyn read the card.

“From B.S. with love.”

“Mr. Alleyn?” said Prunella, coming up behind him. He turned quickly. “It was kind of you to come,” she said. “Thank you.”

“What nice manners you have,” Alleyn said gently. “Your mama must have brought you up beautifully.”

She gave him a surprised look and a smile.

“Did you hear that, Godma V?” she said and she and her three supporters went down the steps and drove away.

When the Vicar had gone into the vestry to take his surplice off and there was nobody left in the churchyard, Alleyn went to the grave. Bruce said: “She’s laid to her rest, then, Superintendent, and whatever brought her to it, there’s no disturbing her in the latter end.”

He spat on his hands. “Come on, lad,” he said. “What are you gawping at?”

Impossible to say how old Daft Artie was — somewhere between puberty and manhood — with an incipient beard and a feral look as if he would have little difficulty in melting into the landscape and was prepared to do so at a moment’s alarm.

He set to, with excessive, almost frantic energy. With a slurp and a flump, shovelfuls of dark, friable soil fell rhythmically into Sybil Foster’s grave.

“Do you happen,” Alleyn asked Bruce, “to have seen Mr. Claude Carter this morning?”

Bruce shot a brief glance at him. “Na, na,” he said, plying his shovel, “I have not but there’s nothing out of the ordinary in that circumstance. Him and me don’t hit it off. And foreby I don’t fancy he’s been just all that comfortable within himself. Nevertheless it’s a disgrace on his head not to pay his last respects. Aye, I’ll say that for him: a black disgrace,” said Bruce, with relish.

“When did you last see him?”

“Ou now — when? I couldna say with any precision. My engagements take me round the district, ye ken. I’m sleeping up at Quintern but I’m up and awa’ before eight o’clock, I take my dinner with my widowed sister, Mrs. Black, puir soul up in yon cottage on the hill there, and return to Quintern in time for supper and my bed, which is in the chauffeur’s old room above the garage. Not all that far,” said Bruce, pointedly, “from where you unearthed him, so to speak.”

“Ah yes, by the way,” said Alleyn, “we’re keeping observation on those premises. For the time being.”

“You are! For what purpose! Och!” said Bruce irritably. “The Lord knows and you, no doubt, won’t let on.”

“Oh,” said Alleyn airily. “It’s a formality, really. Pure routine. I fancy Miss Foster hasn’t forgotten that her mother was thinking of turning part of the buildings into a flat for you?”

“Has she not? I wouldna mind and that’s a fact. I wouldna say no for I’m crampit up like a hen in a wee coopie where I am and God forgive me, I’m sick and tired of listening to the praises of the recently deceased.”

“The recently deceased!” Alleyn exclaimed. “Do you mean Mrs. Foster?”

Bruce grounded his shovel and glared at him. “I am shocked,” he said at last, pursing up his mouth to show how shocked he was and using his primmest tones, “that you should entertain such a notion. It comes little short of an insult. I referred to the fact that my sister, Mrs. Black, is recently widowed.”

“I beg your pardon.”

“Och, well. It was an excusable misunderstanding. So there’s some idea still of fixing the flat?” He paused and stared at Alleyn. “That’s not what you’d call a reason for having the premises policed, however,” he said dryly.

“Bruce,” Alleyn said. “Do you know what Mr. Carter was doing in that room on the morning I first visited you?”

Bruce gave a ringing sniff. “That’s an easy one,” he said. “I told you yesterday. Peering and prying. Spying. Trying to catch what you were spiering. To me. Aye, aye, that’s what he was up to. He’d been hanging about the premises, feckless-like, making oot he was interested in mushrooms and letting on the police were in the noose. When he heard you coming he was through the door like a rabbit and dragging it to, behind him. You needna suppose I’m not acquainted with Mr. Carter’s ways, Superintendent. My lady telt me aboot him and Mrs. Jim’s no’ been backward in coming forward on the subject. When persons of his class turn aside they make a terrible bad job of themsel’s. Aye, they’re worse by a long march than the working-class chap with some call to slip from the paths of rectitude.”

“I agree with you.”

“You can depend on it.”

“And you can’t think when you last saw him?”

Bruce dragged his hand over his beard. “When would it have been, now?” he mused. “Not today. I left the premises before eight and I was hame for dinner and after that I washed myself and changed to a decent suit for the burying. I’ll tell you when it was,” he said, brightening up. “It was yesterday morning. I ran into him in the stable yard and he asked me if I knew how the trains run to Dover. He let on he has an acquaintance there and might pay him a visit some time.”

“Did he say anything about going to the funeral?”

“Did he, now? Wait, now. I canna say for certain but I carry the impression he passed a remark that led me to suppose he’d be attending the obsequies. That,” said Bruce, summing up, “is the length and breadth of my total recollection.” He took up his shovel.

The wee laddie, who had not uttered nor ceased with frantic zeal to cast earth on earth, suddenly gave tongue.

“I seen ’im,” he said loudly.

Bruce contemplated him. “You seen who, you puir daftie?” he asked kindly.

“Him. What you’re talking about.”

Bruce slightly shook his head at Alleyn, indicating the dubious value of anything the gangling creature had to offer. “Did ye noo?” he said tolerantly.

“In the village. It weren’t ’alf dark, ’cept up here where you was digging the grave, Mr. Gardener, and had your ’ceterlene lamp.”

“Where’d you been, then, young Artie, stravaging abroad in the night?”

“I dunno,” said Artie, showing the whites of his eyes.

“Never mind,” Alleyn intervened. “Where were you when you saw Mr. Carter?”

“Corner of Stile Lane, under the yedge, weren’t I? And him coming down into Long Lane.” He began to laugh again: the age-old guffaw of the rustic oaf. “I give him a proper scare, din’ I?” He let out an eldritch screech. “Like that I was in the yedge and he never knew where it come from. Reckon he was dead scared.”

“What did he do, Artie?” Alleyn asked.

“I dunno,” Artie muttered, suddely uninterested.

“Where did he go, then?”

“I dunno.”

“You must know,” Bruce roared out. “Oot wi’ it. Where did he go?”

“I never see. I was under the yedge, wasn’ I? Up the steps, then, he must of, because I yeard the gate squeak. When I come out ’e’d gone.”

Bruce cast his eyes up and shook his head hopelessly at Alleyn. “What are you trying to tell us, Artie?” he asked patiently. “Gone wheer? I never saw the man and there I was, was I no’? He never came my way. Would he enter the church and keep company wi’ the dead?”

This produced a strange reaction. Artie seemed to shrink into himself. He made a movement with his right hand, almost as if to bless himself with the sign of the cross, an age-old self-defensive gesture.

“Did you know,” Alleyn asked quietly, “that Mrs. Foster lay in the church last night?”

Artie looked into the half-filled grave and nodded. “I seen it. I seen them carry it up the steps,” he whispered.

“That was before you saw Mr. Carter come down the lane?”

He nodded.

Bruce said: “Come awa’, laddie. Nobody’s going to find fault with you. Where did Mr. Carter go? Just tell us that now.”

Artie began to whimper, “I dunno,” he whined. “I looked out of the yedge, din’ I? And I never saw ’im again.”

“Where did you go?” Alleyn asked.

“Nowhere.”

Bruce said: “Yah!” and with an air of hardly controlled exasperation returned to his work.

“You must have gone somewhere,” Alleyn said. “I bet you’re quite a one for getting about the countryside on your own. A night bird, aren’t you, Artie?”

A look of complacency appeared. “I might be,” he said and then with a sly glance at Bruce. “I sleep out,” he said, “of a night. Often.”

“Did you sleep out last night? It was a warm night, wasn’t it?”

“Yeah,” Artie conceded off-handedly, “it was warm. I slep’ out.”

“Where? Under the hedge?”

“In the yedge. I got a place.”

“Where you stayed hid when you saw Mr. Carter?”

“That’s right.” Stimulated by the recollection he repeated his screech and raucous laugh.

Bruce seemed about to issue a scandalized reproof but Alleyn checked him. “And after that,” he said, “you settled down and went to sleep? Is that it?”

“ ’Course,” said Artie haughtily and attacked his shovelling with renewed energy.

“When you caught sight of him,” Alleyn asked, “did you happen to notice how he was dressed?”

“I never see nothing to notice.”

“Was he carrying anything? A bag or suitcase?” Alleyn persisted.

“I never see nothing,” Artie repeated morosely.

Alleyn jerked his head at Artie’s back. “Is he to be relied cm?” he said quietly.

“Hard to say. Weak in the head but truthful as far as he goes and that’s not far.” Bruce lowered his voice. “There’s a London train goes through at five past eleven: a slow train with a passenger carriage. Stops at Great Quintern. You can walk it in an hour,” said Bruce with a steady look at Alleyn.

“Is there, indeed?” said Alleyn. “Thank you, Bruce. I won’t keep you any longer but I’m very much obliged to you.”

As he turned away Artie said in a sulky voice and to nobody in particular: “He were carrying a pack. On his back.” Pleased with the rhyme he improvised: “Pack on ’is back and down the track,” and, as an inspired addition: “E’d got the sack.”

“Alas, alack,” Alleyn said and Artie giggled. “Pack on ’is back and got the sack,” he shouted.

“Och, havers!” said Bruce disgustedly. “You’re nowt but a silly, wanting kind of crittur. Haud your whist and get on with your work.”

“Wait a moment,” said Alleyn, and to Artie. “Did you sleep out all night? When did you wake up?”

“When ’e went ’ome,” said Artie, indicating the indignant Bruce. “You woke me up, Mr. Gardener, you passed that close. Whistling. I could of put the wind up you, proper, couldn’t I? I could of frown a brick at you, Mr. Gardener. But I never,” said Artie virtuously.

Bruce made a sound of extreme exasperation.

“When was this, Artie? You wouldn’t know, would you?” said Alleyn.

“Yes, I would, then. Twelve. Church clock sounded twelve, din’ it?”

“Is that right?” Alleyn asked Bruce.

“He can’t count beyond ten. It was nine when I knocked off.”

“Long job, you had of it”

“I did that. There’s a vein of solid clay runs through, three foot depth of it. And after that the pine boughs to push in. It was an unco weird experience. Everybody in the village asleep by then and an owl overhead and bats flying in and out of the lamplight. And inside the kirk, the leddy herself, cold in her coffin and me digging her grave. Aye, it was, you may say, an awfu’, uneasy situation, yon. In literature,” said Bruce, lecturing them, “it’s an effect known as Gothic. I was pleased enough to have done it.”

Alleyn lowered his voice. “Do you think he’s got it right?”

“That he slept under the hedge and woke as I passed? I daresay. It might well be, puir daftie.”

“And that he saw Carter, earlier?”

“I’d be inclined to credit it. I didna see anything of the man mysel’ but then I wouldn’t, where I was.”

“No, of course not. Well, thanks again,” Alleyn said. He returned to the front of the church, ran down the steps and found Fox waiting in the car.

“Back to Quintern,” he said. “The quest for Charmless Claude sets in with a vengeance.”

“Skiddadled?”

“Too soon to say. Bruce indicates as much.”

“Ah, to hell with it,” said Fox in a disgusted voice, “What’s the story?”

Alleyn told him.

“There you are!” Fox complained when he had finished. “Scared him off, I daresay, putting our chap in. Here’s a pretty kettle of fish.”

“We’ll have to take up the Dover possibility, of course, but I don’t like it much. If he’d considered it as a getaway port he wouldn’t have been silly enough to ask Bruce about trains. Still, we’ll check. He’s thought to have some link with a stationer’s shop in Southhampton.”

“Suppose we do run him down, what’s the charge?”

“You may well ask. We’ve got nothing to warrant an arrest unless we can hold him for a day or two on the drug business and that seems to have petered out. We can’t run him in for grubbing up an old fireplace in a disused room in his stepmother’s stable yard. Our chap’s found nothing to signify, I suppose?”

“Nothing, really. You’ve had a better haul, Mr. Alleyn.”

“I don’t know, Foxkin, I don’t know. In one respect I think perhaps I have.”

iii

When Verity drove home from the funeral it was with the expectation of what she called “putting her boots up” and relaxing for an hour or so. She found herself to be suddenly used up and supposed that the events of the past days must have been more exhausting, emotionally, than she had realized. And after further consideration an inborn honesty prompted her to conclude that the years were catching up on her.

“Selfishly considered,” she told herself, “this condition has its advantages. Less is expected of one.” And then she pulled herself together. Anyone would think she was involved up to her ears in this wretched business whereas, of course, apart from being on tap whenever her goddaughter seemed to want her, she was on the perimeter.

She had arrived at this reassuring conclusion when she turned in at her own gate and saw Basil Schramm’s car drawn up in front of her house.

Schramm himself was sitting at the iron table under the lime trees.

His back was toward her but at the sound of her car, he swung round and saw her. The movement was familiar.

When she stopped he was there, opening the door for her.

“You didn’t expect to see me,” he said.

“No.”

“I’m sorry to be a bore. I’d like a word or two if you’ll let me.”

“I can’t very well stop you,” said Verity lightly. She walked quickly to the nearest chair and was glad to sit on it. Her mouth was dry and there was a commotion going on under her ribs.

He took the other chair. She saw him through a kind of mental double focus: as he had been when, twenty-five years ago, she made a fool of herself, and as he was now, not so much changed or aged as exposed.

“I’m going to ask you to be terribly, terribly kind,” he said and waited.

“Are you?”

“Of course you’ll think it bloody cool. It is bloody cool but you’ve always been a generous creature, Verity, haven’t you?”

“I shouldn’t depend on it, if I were you.”

“Well — I can but try.” He took out his cigarette case. It was silver with a sliding action. “Remember?” he said. He slid it open and offered it to her. She had given it to him.

Verity said, “No, thank you, I don’t.”

“You used to. How strong-minded you are. I shouldn’t, of course, but I do.” He gave his rather empty social laugh and lit a cigarette. His hands were unsteady.

Verity thought. I know the line I ought to take if he says what I think he’s come here to say. But can I take it? Can I avoid saying things that will make him suppose I still mind? I know this situation. After it’s all over you think of how dignified and quiet and unmoved you should have been and remember how you gave yourself away at every turn. As I did when he degraded me.

He was preparing his armoury. She had often, even when she had been most attracted, thought how transparent and silly and predictable were his ploys.

“I’m afraid,” he was saying, “I’m going to talk about old times. Will you mind very much?”

“I can’t say I see much point in the exercise,” she said cheerfully. “But I don’t mind, really.”

“I hoped you wouldn’t.”

He waited, thinking perhaps that she would invite him to go on. When she said nothing he began again.

“It’s nothing, really. I didn’t mean to give it a great build-up. It’s just an invitation for you to preserve what they call ‘a masterly inactivity.’ ” He laughed again.

“Yes?”

“About — well, Verity, I expect you’ve guessed what about, haven’t you?”

“I haven’t tried.”

“Well, to be quite, quite honest and straightforward—” He boggled for a moment.

“Quite honest and straightforward?” Verity couldn’t help repeating but she managed to avoid a note of incredulity. She was reminded of another stock phrase-maker — Mr. Markos and his “quite cold-bloodedly.”

“It’s about that silly business a thousand years ago, at St. Luke’s,” Schramm was saying, “I daresay you’ve forgotten all about it.”

“I could hardly do that.”

“I know it looked bad. I know I ought to have — well — asked to see you and explain. Instead of — all right, then—”

“Bolting?” Verity suggested.

“Yes. All right. But you know there were extenuating circumstances. I was in a bloody bad jam for money and I would have paid it back.”

“But you never got it. The bank questioned the signature on the cheque, didn’t they? And my father didn’t make a charge.”

“Very big of him! He only gave me the sack and shattered my career.”

Verity stood up. “It would be ridiculous and embarrassing to discuss it. I think I know what you’re going to ask. You want me to say I won’t tell the police. Is that it?”

“To be perfectly honest—”

“Oh, don’t,” Verity said, and closed her eyes.

“I’m sorry. Yes, that’s it. It’s just that they’re making nuisances of themselves and one doesn’t want to present them with ammunition.”

Verity was painfully careful and slow over her answer. She said: “If you are asking me not to go to Mr. Alleyn and tell him that when you were one of my father’s students I had an affair with you and that you used this as a stepping-stone to forging my father’s signature on a cheque — no, I don’t propose to do that.”

She felt nothing more than a reflected embarrassment when she saw the red flood into his face but she did turn away.

She heard him say: “Thank you for that, at least. I don’t deserve it and I didn’t deserve you. God, what a fool I was!”

She thought: I mustn’t say, “In more ways than one.” She made herself look at him and said: “I think I should tell you that I know you were engaged to Sybil. It’s obvious that the police believe there was foul play and I imagine that as a principal legatee under the Will—”

He shouted her down: “You can’t — Verity, you would never think I–I—? Verity?”

“Killed her?”

“My God!”

“No. I don’t think you did that. But I must tell you that if Mr. Alleyn finds out about St. Luke’s and the cheque episode and asks me if it was all true, I shan’t lie to him. I shan’t elaborate or make any statements. On the contrary I shall probably say I prefer not to answer. But I shan’t lie.”

“By God,” he repeated, staring at her. “So you haven’t forgiven me, have you?”

“Forgiven? It doesn’t arise.” Verity looked squarely at him. “That’s true, Basil. It’s the wrong sort of word. It upsets me to look back at what happened, of course it does. After all, one has one’s pride. But otherwise the question’s academic. Forgiven you? I suppose I must have but — no, it doesn’t arise.”

“And if you ‘prefer not to answer,’ ” he said, sneering, it seemed, at himself as much as at her, “what’s Alleyn going to think? Not much doubt about that one, is there? Look here: has he been at you already?”

“He came to see me.”

“What for? Why? Was it about — that other nonsense? On Capri?”

“On the long vacation? When you practised as a qualified doctor? No, he said nothing about that.,

“It was a joke. A ridiculous old hypochondriac, dripping with jewels and crying out for it. What did it matter?”

“It mattered when they found out at St. Luke’s.”

“Bloody pompous lot of stuffed shirts. I knew a damn’ sight more medics than most of their qualified teacher’s pets.”

“Have you ever qualified? No, don’t tell me,” said Verity quickly.

“Has Nick Markos talked about me? To you?”

“No.”

“Really?”

“Yes, Basil, really,” she said and tried to keep the patient sound out of her voice.

“I only wondered. Not that he’d have anything to say that mattered. It’s just that you seemed to be rather thick with him, I thought.”

There was only one thing now that Verity wanted and she wanted it urgently. It was for him to go away. She had no respect left for him and had had none for many years but it was awful to have him there, pussyfooting about in the ashes of their past and making such a shabby job of it. She felt ashamed and painfully sorry for him, too.

“Was that all you wanted to know?” she asked.

“I think so. No, there’s one other thing. You won’t believe this but it happens to be true. Ever since that dinner-party at Mardling — months ago when we met again — I’ve had — I mean I’ve not been able to get you out of my head. You haven’t changed all that much, Verry. Whatever you may say, it was very pleasant. Us. Well, wasn’t it? What? Come on, be honest. Wasn’t it quite fun?”

He actually put his hand over hers. She was aghast. Something of her incredulity and enormous distaste must have appeared in her face. He withdrew his hand as if it had been scalded.

“I’d better get on my tin tray and slide off,” he said. “Thank you for seeing me.”

He got into his car. Verity went indoors and gave herself a strong drink. The room felt cold.

iv

Claude Carter had gone. His rucksack and its contents had disappeared and some of his undelicious garments.

His room was in disorder. It had not been Mrs. Jim’s day at Quintern Place. She had told Alleyn to use her key hidden under the stone in the coal house, and they had let themselves in with it.

There was a note scrawled on a shopping pad in the kitchen. “Away for an indefinite time. Will let you know if and when I return. C.C.” No date. No time.

And now, in his room, they searched again and found nothing of interest until Alleyn retrieved a copy of last week’s local newspaper from the floor behind the unmade bed.

He looked through it. On the advertisement page under “Cars for Sale” he found, halfway down the column, a ring round an insertion that offered a 1964 Heron for £500 or nearest offer. The telephone number had been underlined.

“He gave it out,” Alleyn reminded Fox, “that he was seeing a man about a car.”

“Will I ring them?”

“If you please, Br’er Fox.”

But before Fox could do so a distant telephone began to ring. Alleyn opened the door and listened. He motioned to Fox to follow him and walked down the passage toward the stairhead.

The telephone in the hall below could now be heard. He ran down the stairs and answered it, giving the Quintern number.

“Er, yes,” said a very loud man’s voice. “Would this be the gentleman who undertook to buy a sixty-four Heron off of me and was to collect it yesterday evening? Name of Carter?”

“He’s out at the moment, I’m afraid. Can I take a message?”

“Yes, you can. I’ll be obliged if he’ll ring up and inform me one way or the other. If he don’t, I’ll take it the sale’s off and dispose of the vehicle elsewhere. He can collect his deposit when it bloody suits him. Thank you.”

The receiver was jammed back before Alleyn could reply.

“Hear that?” he asked Fox.

“Very put about, wasn’t he? Funny, that. Deposit paid down and all. Looks like something urgent cropped up to make him have it on the toes,” said Fox, meaning “bolt.”

“Or it might be he couldn’t raise the principal. What do you reckon, Mr. Alleyn? He’s only recently returned from abroad so his passport ought to be in order.”

“Presumably.”

“Or he may be tucked away somewhere handy or gone to try and raise the cash for the car. Have we got anything on his associates?”

“Nothing to write home about. His contact in the suspected drug business is thought to be a squalid little stationer’s shop in Southampton: one of the sort that provides an accommodation address. It’s called The Good Read and is in Port Lane.”

“Sussy on drugs,” Fox mused, “and done for blackmail.”

“Attempted blackmail. The victim didn’t play ball. He charged him and Claude did three months. Blackmail tends to be a chronic condition. He may have operated at other times with success.”

“What’s our move, then?”

“Complete this search and then get down to the village again and see if we can find anything to bear out Artie’s tale of Claude’s nocturnal on-goings.”

When they arrived back at the village and inspected the. hedgerow near the corner of Stile Lane and Long Lane they soon found what they sought, a hole in the tangle of saplings, blackthorn and weeds that could be crept into from the field beyond and was masked from the sunken lane below by grasses and wild parsnip. Footprints from a hurdle-gate into the field led to the hole and a flattened depression within it where they found five cigarette butts and as many burnt matches. Clear of the hedge was an embryo fireplace constructed of a few old bricks and a crossbar of wood supported by two cleft sticks.

“Snug,” said Fox. “And here’s where sonny-boy plays Indian.”

“That’s about the form.”

“And kips with the bunnies and tiggywinkles.”

“And down the lane comes Claude with his pack on his back.”

“All of a summer’s night.”

“All right, all right. He must have passed more or less under Artie’s nose.”

“Within spitting range,” Fox agreed.

“Come on.”

Alleyn led the way back into Long Lane and to the lych-gate at the foot of the church steps. He pushed it open and it squeaked.

“I wonder,” Alleyn said, “how many people have walked up those steps since nine o’clock last night. The whole funeral procession.”

“That’s right,” said Fox gloomily.

“Coffin bearers, mourners. Me. After that, tidy-uppers, and the Vicar, one supposes.”

He stooped down, knelt, peered. “Yes, I think so,” he said. “On the damp earth the near side of the gate and well to the left. In the shelter of the lych, if that’s the way to put it. Very faint but I fancy they’re our old friends the crepe-soled shoes. Take a look.”

Fox did so. “Yes,” he said. “By gum, I think so.”

“More work for Bill Bailey and until he gets here the local copper can undisguise himself and take another turn at masterly inactivity. So far it’s one up to Artie.”

“Not a chance of anything on the steps.”

“I’m afraid, not a chance. Still — up we go.”

They climbed the steps, slowly and searchingly. Inside the church the organ suddenly blared and infant voices shrilled.

“Choir practice,” said Alleyn. “Damn. Not an inappropriate choice, though, when you come to think of it.”

The steps into the porch showed signs of the afternoon’s traffic. Alleyn took a look inside. The Vicar’s wife was seated at the organ with five litle girls and two little boys clustered round her. When she saw Alleyn her jaw dropped in the middle of “Onward.” He made a pacifying signal and withdrew. He and Fox walked round the church to Sybil Foster’s grave.

Bruce and Artie had taken trouble over finishing their job. The flowers — Bruce would certainly call them “floral tributes”—no longer lined the path but had been laid in meticulous order on the mound which they completely covered, stalks down, blossoms pointing up, in receding size. The cellophane covers on the professional offerings glistened in the sun and looked, Alleyn thought, awful. On the top, as a sort of baleful bon-bouche, was the great sheaf of red roses and carnations “From B.S.”

“It’s quite hopeless,” Alleyn said. “There must have been thirty or more people tramping round the place. If ever his prints were here they’ve been trodden out. We’d better take a look but we won’t find.”

Nor did they.

“Not to be fanciful,” Fox said. “As far as the foosteps go it’s like coming to the end of a trail. Room with the point marked X, gardener’s shed, broom recess, lych-gate and — nothing. It would have been appropriate, you might say, if they’d finished up for keeps at the graveside.”

Alleyn didn’t answer for a second or two.

“You do,” he then said, “get the oddest flights of fancy. It would, in a macabre sort of way, have been dramatically satisfactory.”

“If he did her, that is.”

“Ah. If.”

“Well,” said Fox, “it looks pretty good to me. How else do you explain the ruddy prints? He lets on he’s an electrician, he takes up the lilies, he hides in the recess and when the coast’s clear he slips in and does her. Motive: the cash: a lot of it. You can’t explain it any other way.”

“Can’t you?”

“Well, can you?”

“We mentioned his record, didn’t we? Blackmail. Shouldn’t we perhaps bestow a passing thought on that?”

“Here! Wait a bit — wait a bit,” said Fox, startled. He became broody and remained so all the way to Greater Quintern.

They drove to the police station where Alleyn had established his headquarters and been given a sort of mini-office next door to the charge room. It had a table, three chairs, writing material and a telephone, which was all he expected to be given, and suited him very well.

The sergeant behind the counter in the front office was on the telephone when they came in. When he saw Alleyn he raised his hand.

“Just a minute, Madam,” he said. “The Chief Superintendent has come in. Will you hold on, please?” He put his enormous hand over the receiver. “It’s a lady asking for you, sir. She seems to be upset. Shall I take the name?”

“Do.”

“What name was it, Madam? Yes, Madam, he is here. What name shall I say? Thank you. Hold the line please,” said the sergeant, restopping the receiver. “It’s a Sister Jackson, sir. She says it’s very urgent.”

Alleyn gave a long whistle, pulled a face at Fox and said he’d take the call in his room.

Sister Jackson’s voice, when it came through, was an extraordinary mixture of refinement and what sounded like sheer terror. She whispered, and her whisper was of the piercing kind. She gasped, she faded out altogether and came back with a rush. She apologized for being silly and said she didn’t know what he would think of her. Finally she breathed heavily into the receiver, said she was “in shock” and wanted to see him. She could not elaborate over the telephone.

Alleyn, thoughtfully contemplating Mr. Fox, said he would come to Greengages, upon which she gave an instantly muffled shriek and said no, no that would never do and that she had the evening off and would meet him in the bar-parlour of the Iron Duke on the outskirts of Maidstone. “It’s quite nice, really,” she quavered.

“Certainly,” Alleyn said. “What time?”

“About nayne?”

“Nine let it be. Cheer up, Sister. You don’t feel like giving me an inkling as to what it’s all about?”

When she answered she had evidently put her mouth inside the receiver.

“Blackmail,” she articulated and his eardrum tingled.

Approaching voices were to be heard. Sister Jackson came through from a normal distance. “O.K.” she cried. “That’ll be fantastic, cheery-bye” and hung up.

“Blackmail,”‘ Alleyn said to Fox. “We’ve only got to mention it and up it rises.”

“Well!” said Fox, “fancy that! Would it be going too far to mention Claude?”

“Who can tell? But at least it’s suggestive. I’ll leave you to get things laid up in the village. Where are Bailey and Thompson, by the way?”

“Doing the fireplace and the toolshed. They’re to ring back here before leaving.”

“Right. Get the local copper to keep an eye on the lych-gate until B and T arrive. Having dealt with that and just to show zealous they may then go over the churchyard area and see if they can find a trace we’ve missed. And having turned them on, Fox, check the progress, if any, of the search for Claude Carter. Oh, and see if you can get a check on the London train from Great Quintern at eleven-five last night. I think that’s the lot.”

“You don’t require me?”

“No. La belle Jackson is clearly not in the mood. Sickening for you.”

“We’ll meet at our pub, then?”

“Yes.”

“I shan’t wait up,” said Fox.

“Don’t dream of it.”

“In the meantime I’ll stroll down to the station hoping for better luck than I had with the Greengages bus.”

“Do. I’ll bring my file up to date.”

“Were you thinking of taking dinner?”

“I was thinking of taking worm-coloured fish in pink sauce and athletic fowl at our own pub. Do join me.”

“Thanks. That’s all settled, then,” said Fox comfortably and took himself oft.

v

There were only seven customers in the bar-parlour of the Iron Duke when Alleyn walked in at a quarter to nine: an amorous couple at a corner table and five city-dressed men playing poker.

Alleyn took a glass of a respectable port to a banquette at the farthest remove from the other tables and opened the evening paper. A distant roar of voices from the two bars bore witness to the Duke’s popularity. At five to nine Sister Jackson walked in. He received the slight shock caused by an encounter with a nurse seen for the first time out of uniform. Sister Jackson was sheathed in clinging blue with a fairly reckless cleavage. She wore a velvet beret that rakishly shaded her face, and insistent gloves. He saw that her makeup was more emphatic than usual, especially about the eyes. She had been crying.

“How punctual we both are,” he said. He turned a chair to the table with its back to the room and facing the banquette. She sat in it without looking at him and with a movement of her shoulders that held a faint suggestion of what might have passed as provocation under happier circumstances. He asked her what she would have to drink and when she hesitated and bridled a little, proposed brandy.

“Well — thank you,” she said. He ordered a double one. When it came she took a sudden pull at it, shuddered and said she had been under a severe strain. It was the first remark of more than three words that she had offered.

“This seems quite a pleasant pub,” he said. “Do you often come here?”

“No. Never. They — we — all use the Crown at Greendale. That’s why I suggested it. To be sure.”

“I’m glad,” Alleyn said, “that whatever it’s all about you decided to tell me.”

“It’s very difficult to begin.”

“Never mind. Try. You said something about blackmail, didn’t you? Shall we begin there?”

She stared at him for an awkwardly long time and then suddenly opened her handbag, pulled out a folded paper and thrust it across the table. She then took another pull at her brandy.

Alleyn unfolded the paper, using his pen and a fingernail to do so. “Were you by any chance wearing gloves when you handled this?” he asked.

“As it happened. I was going out. I picked it up at the desk.”

“Where’s the envelope?”

“I don’t know. Yes, I do. I think. On the floor of my car. I opened it in the car.”

The paper was now spread out on the table. It was of a kind as well-known to the police as a hand-bill: a piece of off-white commercial paper, long and narrow, that might have been torn from a domestic aide-mémoire. The message was composed of words and letters that had been cut from newsprint and gummed in two irregular lines.

“Post £500 fives and singles to C. Morris 11 Port Lane Southampton otherwise will inform police your visit to room 20 Genuine”

Alleyn looked at Sister Jackson and Sister Jackson looked like a mesmerized rabbit at him.

“When did it come?”

“Yesterday morning.”

“To Greengages?”

“Yes.”

“Is the envelope addressed in this fashion?”

“Yes. My name’s all in one. I recognized it — it’s from an advertisement in the local rag for Jackson’s Drapery and it’s the same with Greengages Hotel. Cut out of an advertisement.”

“You didn’t comply, of course?”

“No. I didn’t know what to do. I — nothing like that’s ever happened to me — I–I was dreadfully upset.”

“You didn’t ask anyone to advise you?”

She shook her head.

“Dr. Schramm, for instance?”

He could have sworn that her opulent flesh did a little hop and that for the briefest moment an extremely vindictive look flicked on and off. She wetted her mouth. “Oh, no,” she whispered. “No, thank you!”

“This is the only message you’ve received?”

“There’s been something else. Something much worse. Last evening. Soon after eight. They fetched me from the dining-room.”

“What was it? A telephone call?”

“You knew!”

“I guessed. Go on, please.”

“When the waiter told me, I knew. I don’t know why but I did. I knew. I took it in one of the telephone boxes in the hall. I think he must have had something over his mouth. His voice was muffled and peculiar. It said: ‘You got the message.’ I couldn’t speak and then it said: ‘You did or you’d answer. Have you followed instructions?’ I — didn’t know what to say so I said: ‘I will’ and it said ‘you better.’ It said something else, I don’t remember exactly, something about the only warning, I think. That’s all,” said Sister Jackson, and finished her cognac. She held the unsteady glass between her white-gloved paws and put it down awkwardly.

Alleyn said:“Do you mind if I keep this? And would you be kind enough to refold it and put it in here for me?” He took an envelope from his pocket and laid it beside the paper.

She complied and made a shaky business of doing so. He put the envelope in his breast pocket.

“What will he do to me?” asked Sister Jackson.

“The odds are: nothing effective. The police may get something from him but you’ve anticipated that, haven’t you? Or you will do so.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Sister Jackson,” Alleyn said. “Don’t you think you had better tell me about your visit to Room Twenty?”

She tried to speak. Her lips moved. She fingered them and then looked at the smudge of red on her glove.

“Come along,” he said.

“You won’t understand.”

“Try me.”

“I can’t.”

“Then why have you asked to see me? Surely it was to anticipate whatever the concocter of this message might hâve to say to us. You’ve got in first.”

“I haven’t done anything awful. I’m a fully qualified nurse.”

“Of course you are. Now then, when did you pay this visit?”

She focussed her gaze on the couple in the far corner, stiffened her neck and rattled off her account in a series of disjointed phrases.

It had been at about nine o’clock on the night of Mrs. Foster’s death (Sister Jackson called it her “passing”). She herself walked down the passage on her way to her own quarters. She heard the television bawling away in Number 20. Pop music. She knew Mrs. Foster didn’t appreciate pop and she thought she might have fallen asleep and the noise would disturb the occupants of neighbouring rooms. So she tapped and went in.

Here Sister Jackson paused. A movement of her chin and throat indicated a dry swallow.When she began again her voice was pitched higher but not by any means louder than before.

“The patient—” she said, “Mrs. Foster, I mean — was, as I thought she would be. Asleep. I looked at her and made sure she was — asleep. So I came away. I came away. I wasn’t there for more than three minutes. That’s all. All there is to tell you.”

“How was she lying?”

“On her side, with her face to the wall.”

“When Dr. Schramm found her she was on her back.”

“I know. That proves it. Doesn’t it? Doesn’t it!”

“Did you turn off the television?”

“No. Yes! I don’t remember. I think I must have. I don’t know.”

“It was still going when Dr. Schramm found her.”

“Well, I didn’t, then, did I? I didn’t turn it off.”

“Why, I wonder?”

“It’s no good asking me things like that. I’ve been shocked. I don’t remember details.”

She beat on the table. The amorous couple unclinched and one of the card players looked over his shoulder. Sister Jackson had split her glove.

Alleyn said: “Should we continue this conversation somewhere else?”

“No. I’m sorry.”

With a most uncomfortable parody of coquettishness she leant across the table and actually smiled or seemed to smile at him.

“I’ll be all right,” she said.

Their waiter came back and looked enquiringly at her empty glass.

“Would you like another?” Alleyn asked.

“I don’t think so. No. Well, a small one, then.”

The waiter was quick bringing it.

“Right. Now — how was the room? The bedside table? Did you notice the bottle of barbiturates?”

“I didn’t notice. I’ve said so. I just saw she was asleep and I went away.”

“Was the light on in the bathroom?”

This seemed to terrify her. She said: “Do you mean—? Was he there? Whoever it was? Hiding? Watching? No, the door was shut, I mean — I think it was shut.”

“Did you see anybody in the passage? Before you went into the room or when you left it?”

“No.”

“Sure?”

“Yes.”

“There’s that alcove, isn’t there? Where the brooms and vacuum cleaner are kept?”

She nodded. The amorous couple were leaving. The man helped the girl into her coat. They both looked at Alleyn and Sister Jackson. She fumbled in her bag and produced a packet of cigareetes.

Alleyn said: “I’m sorry. I’ve given up and forget to keep any on me. At least I can offer you a light.” He did so and she made a clumsy business of using it. The door swung to behind the couple. The card players had finished their game and decided, noisily, to move into the bar. When they had gone Alleyn said: “You realize, don’t you — well of course you do — that the concocter of this threat must have seen you?”

She stared at him. “Naturally,” she said, attempting, he thought, a sneer.

“Yes,” he said. “It’s a glimpse of the obvious, isn’t it? And you’ll remember that I showed you a lily head that Inspector Fox and I found in the alcove?”

“Of course.”

“And that there were similar lilies in the hand-basin in Mrs. Foster’s bathroom?”

“Naturally. I mean — yes, I saw them afterwards. When we used the stomach pump. We scrubbed up under the bath taps. It was quicker than clearing away the mess in the basin.”

“So it follows as the night the day that the person who dropped the lily head in the alcove was the person who put the flowers in the hand-basin. Does it also follow that this same person was your blackmailer?”

“I — yes. I suppose it might.”

“And does it also follow, do you think, that the blackmailer was the murderer of Mrs. Foster?”

“But you don’t know. You don’t know that she was—that.”

“We believe we do.”

She ought, he thought, to be romping about like a Rubens lady in an Arcadian setting: all sumptuous flesh, no brains and as happy as Larry, instead of quivering like an overdressed jelly in a bar-parlour.

“Sister Jackson,” he said. “Why didn’t you tell the coroner or the police or anyone at all that you went into Room Twenty at about nine o’clock that night and found Mrs. Foster asleep in her bed?”

She opened and shut her smudged lips two or three times, gaping like a fish.

“Nobody asked me,” she said. “Why should I?”

“Are you sure Mrs. Foster was asleep?”

Her lips formed the words but she had no voice. “Of course I am.”

“She wasn’t asleep, was she? She was dead.”

The swing door opened and Basil Schramm walked in. “I thought I’d find you,” he said. “Good evening.”