Death at Hallows End, page 11
Carolus turned to Thripp rather pointedly.
“Tell me, as a matter of interest,” he said. “Did Humby include any Hallows End local charities in Grossiter’s will?”
“Yes. He did. I don’t remember exactly what. The choice was left to him entirely, remember.”
“Of course. That was all the Rector had to tell you?”
“I think so. He is very, very upset about the whole thing. Poor fellow seems a bag of nerves.”
“He did not give me that impression,” said Carolus. “But that was yesterday, and anyway you know him better than I do. Well, I am delighted to have seen you both. I must get back now to the wrath of my housekeeper.”
“You suffer from that, too, do you?” put in Sporter, not noticing that his wife had entered the bar behind him.
“Who’s a housekeeper?” she asked. “You be careful what you’re saying.”
Mr. Sporter grinned.
“You’re marve, my dear. Absolutely marve.”
Carolus left them to it.
Mrs. Stick, as a matter of fact, was delighted to see Carolus back to eat his lapper oh at last.
“I’ve done it ar long lays,” she said. “That’s brazy with force meat balls. It’s so tender it will melt in your mouth. And I’ve got a bottle of that wine I told you about, nicely sham bray. So you’ll be all right for tonight, anyway, whatever you may get up to tomorrow.”
“I’m going to stay at home,” said Carolus.
“Well, so you ought, sir, with it being Sunday. I’m sure it must be wrong to go playing about with murders and that on the Sabbath, even if it’s not at any other time. I’ll bring your dinner in about ten minutes.”
Carolus phoned Mr. Gorringer and asked whether he would be at home that evening.
“Mrs. Gorringer and I will be delighted to see you, my dear Deene, at the School House. What time shall we expect you? Nine? Splendid. In the meantime retournons à nos moutons”
“Oh, were you having dinner?” said Carolus. “So sorry to disturb you.”
At the appointed time he found Mr. Gorringer and his wife in the chintzy drawing room of School House. Mrs. Gorringer was a tall, somewhat scrawny woman with a reputation, fostered by her husband, for wit. Her expression was eager and watchful as though she were forever awaiting a chance to be funny.
“Ah, Deene,” said Mr. Gorringer. “Choose your seat and make yourself comfortable. I know you like a good cigar and have reserved for you one of these. Really excellent, I find them. They are called Whiffs and my wife laughingly refers to them as a whiff of grapeshot. You won’t? Then a glass of port? No? Perhaps we can tempt you presently to coffee. I hope you bring good news for us? A propos Mr. Humby, I mean. I need scarcely remind you that he is a School Governor.”
“I’m afraid not,” said Carolus. “In fact I’m pretty certain that Duncan Humby is dead.”
Dead?” echoed Mr. Gorringer inevitably, as though he were astounded at the very notion.
“Unless I am wholly mistaken about the whole case.”
“And that, I suppose, you will never admit to being. So you will have it that poor Humby is dead. Where, then, is his body?”
“I don’t know,” said Carolus wearily. “It may never be found. We are up against great cunning and resolve here. It would not surprise me if no one is ever tried, and I certainly doubt if there will be a conviction.”
“I will not have that!” said Mr. Gorringer. “You do yourself less than justice. A murderer so subtle that he escapes the net of our Deene? It’s not to be thought of.” He turned to his wife, “Is it, my dear?”
Mrs. Gorringer seemed to be thinking out a mot in reply, but, unsuccessful in her search, made do with a breezy, “Not for a moment.”
“I am glad, however, that you have come this evening, Deene, and that for two reasons. One is that I wished to remind you that term starts next Friday so we must hope all your investigations may be completed by then. The other is that I think perhaps—unexpected as this will be to you—I may be able to add my mite to the information you are seeking. That, in modern popular parlance, shakes you, I imagine.”
“It has not happened before, certainly. What information have you got, Headmaster?”
“Ah! I see I have aroused your curiosity. But it is possible you are already aware of the circumstances. Do you remember, some five years ago, a day boy of the name of Spaull?”
“Can’t say I do,” said Carolus, “I was never good at the boys’ names.”
“A pity. A great pity. To know their names is half the battle. However, this boy Spaull will come to your recollection if you remember the last season in which we played Rugby Football before changing over to Association in the Christmas Term and the salubrious game of Hockey in the Spring. Spaull played fullback, a mighty man of valour.”
“Indeed? Yes? I scarcely remember the Rugby team.”
“I was forgetting,” said Mr. Gorringer severely, “your unfortunate attitude of indifference towards the school’s prowess in sports. Fortunately I can amend it. Spaull was so over-vigorous in the match against Margate College that there was some rather embittered correspondence between me and the Headmaster of that no doubt excellent institution.”
“I remember this Spaull,” said Carolus. “An apish lout who failed every exam he went in for, but was excused for this because he played well at some game.”
“A flannelled fool at the wicket? Or a muddled oaf at the goal?” asked Mrs. Gorringer brightly.
“Both, so far as I can remember,” said Carolus.
Mr. Gorringer showed his displeasure by a long deep rumble as he cleared his throat.
“Spaull,” he said, “was School Captain, a dauntless player of Rugby Football and a resourceful bowler of no mean batting ability. He did the school much credit in the field although no great things could be expected from him in the classroom. It now appears, Deene, that he is involved in the events you are investigating.”
“How?”
“It has come to my ears,” said Mr. Gorringer, and Carolus could not keep his eyes from those hirsute orifices, “that this same Spaull, initial H I believe, was on the scene of the crime when it happened.”
“What crime?” asked Carolus.
There was another displeased rumble.
“The crime you are investigating, Deene.”
“I wish I knew what that was, let alone where or when it happened.”
“Let me then put it that Spaull was staying in Hallows End last week and for all I know is there still.”
“He is,” said Carolus. “I know that.”
“What perhaps you do not know, Deene,” said the Headmaster with triumph in his voice, “is that Rumour has been busy with this young man and has connected him, in no uncertain way, with the late James Grossiter. In a word, he is believed to be Grossiter’s illegitimate son.”
“Yes. I have heard that tale and I don’t believe it for a moment. But his mother was given a handsome settlement when she left Grossiter’s service. And Humphrey Spaull was to have received ten thousand pounds from Grossiter.”
“I see you are already well informed,” said Mr. Gorringer sourly.
“Where you might be helpful to me, Headmaster, is in the matter of Spaull’s character as a boy. Did he seem cut out for crime? Would you consider him a potential murderer?”
“Deene, we are chatting informally in the presence of my wife. Nonetheless I must apply all the weight of my office to protest, in the strongest terms, against your suggestion that our system here at Newminster could produce any such ghastly anomaly. No boy who has been in my care will ever, please God, besmirch the good name of the Queen’s School by—”
“Not even Priggley?” interrupted Carolus.
“I scarcely regard Priggley as a product of the school at all, remembering his unfortunate background and heredity. But even he … However, let me content myself with a simple but emphatic negative to your query. No, sir, Spaull had no criminal tendencies. He was not an intellectual, but an honest, hardworking, hard-playing boy of whom the school may well be proud. And not all your—I use harsh terms perhaps—your perverted ingenuity will succeed in involving him in whatever web of guilt you may be spinning.”
“So there!” added Mrs. Gorringer, smiling.
“My dear,” reproved her husband. “No one appreciates the felicities of your ready humour more than I, but at the moment I am in deadly earnest.”
“Well, thank you for your information, Headmaster.” Carolus rose to his feet. “I only came to tell you that I am very pessimistic about this case. I believe Humby is dead, and I doubt if we shall ever get a conviction.”
He bade goodnight to both of them and hurried home to bed.
Next morning he realised the soldier’s dream and stayed in bed till nearly eleven o’clock, reading the Sunday papers. But just as he was about to get up, Mrs. Stick came to his room, her cheeks flushed and her eyes behind her steel-rimmed spectacles bright and angry.
“It’s begun all over again, as I knew it would,” she said. “There’s two of them downstairs now asking for you urgent about Hallows End and the young man’s got his head all bandaged up and looks a sight. I don’t like the look of her, either.”
“Tell them I’ll be down in ten minutes.,” said Carolus.
“I was just making my patty mason when the bell went.”
“Perry Mason, surely Mrs. Stick.”
“No, sir, patty mason for your first course, and now I don’t know how it’ll turn out. Sunday morning, too. I told them you didn’t believe in playing with murderers on a Sunday but they would have it they must see you at once. Spaull, his name is, and I don’t like to ask hers. Not looking like she does.”
It was less than ten minutes later when Carolus reached his sitting room and found the couple sitting side by side on a settee. Spaull was burly with a crew cut, the girl was good-looking but somewhat supercilious in expression.
Spaull said at once, as though prompted, “Do you remember me, sir? I was at the Queen’s School.”
Carolus looked at him. “Yes. I think so. What’s the matter with your head?”
“That’s what we’ve come to see you about,” said the girl. “My name’s Zelia Harris, by the way. Last night…”
“Were you there, Miss Harris?”
“Not ecktually.”
“Then hadn’t we better have the story from Spaull?”
“You’re going to get it. We’re going to my home to take it down and type it now.”
“To type it? Why?”
“Tell him, Humphrey.”
“It’s all rather complicated,” said Spaull. “There’s a lot of detail I might forget, so Zelia suggested my dictating to her.”
“And I said it was the only occasion on which you would dictate to me, in any sense of the word.”
“Dictating what?” asked Carolus, somewhat impatiently.
“A statement on this whole affair at Hallows End.”
“What do you know about it?”
“A good deal more than you think, Mr. Deene,” said Zelia. “Humphrey was connected in a certain way with Grossiter.”
Carolus turned pointedly to Spaull.
“Do you know anything that may throw light on the disappearance of Duncan Humby?”
Spaull considered.
“I don’t quite know. Perhaps you had better read my statement when it’s finished.”
“But why on earth do you want to dictate a statement? If you know anything, why not tell it to the police?”
“I have answered all the questions put by the police perfectly truthfully.”
“Then why come to me?”
“Why not?” put in Zelia. “Humphrey remembers you from his schooldays when you were always investigating something. He saw you down at Hallows End the other day, so we put two and two together. I told him to dictate the story. He’s not a good raconteur.”
“I see. Will you be prepared to answer questions on your statement, Spaull?”
Once again it was Zelia who answered.
“It depends on what they are,” she said. “We’re not going to be involved in this thing for anybody.”
“I certainly see no reason why you should be involved, Miss Harris. Indeed I do not see how you come into it at all, or why you have done me the honour of this visit.”
Zelia attempted a disarming smile.
“Humphrey’s hopeless on his own, Mr. Deene. He’s so unpractical. You surely don’t mind my giving him a little moral support?”
“Is that what you call it?”
“He has often talked about you. We felt sure you would advise him.”
“I will certainly read his statement. But I warn you I may find it my duty to hand it on to Detective Sergeant Snow who is investigating the case.”
“Well, if you say so,” agreed Zelia.
“I hope it will include details of what took you to Hallows End, Spaull.”
“It will begin at the beginning and go on till it comes to the end; then stop,” promised Zelia archly, on which they took their leave, promising to deliver the report that same day.
At four o’clock that afternoon, it was handed in a carefully sealed envelope to Mrs. Stick by Spaull who escaped before she could deliver it to Carolus.
Carolus immediately sat down to read it.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Statement of Humphrey Fowler Spaull
WHEN I WAS A SMALL boy I knew nothing, of course, of an irregularity about my parentage. I cannot remember my mother actually saying that my father was dead but it was with this supposition that I reached my teens.
My mother seems in retrospect very young—she was in fact twenty-nine when I was born and died at fifty, two years ago. She was a cheerful person who enjoyed running her successful little business and was popular in the district. She sent me to the Queen’s School as a day boy and I became captain of the school teams, both Rugger and Cricket.
At fifteen a woman friend of my mother’s told me that I was old Grossiter’s natural son, that my mother had been his housekeeper and had been set up in her shop by Grossiter just after I was born. This disturbed and perplexed me a good deal but I did not ask my mother about it. Nor did I ever hear my mother speak of Grossiter except casually as a local character.
I was just twenty when mother died. She had told me that she wanted me to sell the sweet shop after she was gone because there would be enough money then for me to complete my education and fulfill her dearest wish by entering a profession. Her affairs, she said, were in the hands of Mr. Duncan Humby and I should go to him if she died.
I did so a week after my mother’s funeral. At first he was civil enough, went into details of selling the shop and told me that apart from this there would be about 2,000 pounds for me from my mother’s little estate. Then I made the mistake of telling him the story I had heard about our relations with Grossiter, and he changed his manner in a moment, treating me as though I was a blackmailer. He did not answer my question but said that no good would come of my enquiring into these things, and adopted a rather threatening attitude. “This much is true,” he said, “Mr. Grossiter has been extremely kind to your mother who once worked for him. There is nothing more to be said and I hope you will not mention the matter to me or to anyone else again.” He became brusque where he had been polite and dismissed me as though I were an undesirable.
This rankled a great deal and I formed a dislike for Humby which I have never lost. It was perhaps his air of authority and well-being which made me think of becoming a solicitor myself. I had never been much good at passing exams but I decided that if I really applied myself I could learn what was necessary about law, and after the sweet shop was sold, I obtained a job as junior clerk with the firm of Dawley, Rowe and Blanchard, who were the chief rivals in Newminster to Merryweather, Priming and Catley, Humby’s firm.
The firm, for which I worked happily for a year, had acted for Grossiter at the time when my mother worked for him. I found this out by chance and learned that afterwards there had been some dispute between our then senior partner William Rowe and Grossiter, and Grossiter had taken his business to Humby. It was some weeks before I had an opportunity of looking at the files of that time and I finally did so only about a month ago. The story, when I knew it, surprised me a great deal. I was not Grossiter’s bastard son, as I had supposed, but the offspring of his son Raymond Grossiter. When old Grossiter found out about his son and my mother, he was furious and threw both of them out of his house—almost literally, I gathered—though he did not treat them parsimoniously. For my mother he bought the shop, for his son he bought a ticket to South Africa and paid a large sum into a bank for him there. I believe they never so much as corresponded again.
On learning the truth about my parentage, I decided to see old Grossiter myself. I am, after all, his grandson and I felt he should take some interest in the career I had adopted. But I found myself prevented from approaching him by the man Darkin who guarded the house like a trained dog. I tried writing to my grandfather, but receiving no reply, I guessed that my letters were not reaching him. I went to see Mr. Humby, but he told me to leave his office.
The truth was, I wanted to get married to Zelia Harris and I felt that old Grossiter should help me to do so, considering the circumstances of my birth. I was determined to get to see him and eventually—in a pub called the Black Horse—I made the acquaintance of a woman employed in Grossiter’s house as a char. She promised to inform me of all that went on and said that if Darkin was going to be absent from the house at any time for long, she would let me know and I could get in.
Before this happened, however, she brought me other news. Grossiter and Darkin were going to Hallows End to stay with Grossiter’s nephews and might be there for a week or more.
I saw this as my chance. I asked for and obtained a fortnight’s holiday and Zelia drove me to Hallows End. I knew nobody there and thought the best person to see was the Rector. He told me about Mrs. Rudd and I became her lodger. That was on the day after Grossiter had arrived at Monk’s Farm—that is to say Saturday, September nth. I kept out of the way as far as possible, particularly of Darkin, and I am almost certain that for several days he knew nothing of my being in Hallows End.
