Death at Hallows End, page 12
Rudd died on Wednesday the 15 th, and on Thursday afternoon I succeeded in seeing my grandfather. I had noticed that Darkin usually took a walk in the afternoon in the direction of the village, and was absent for at least an hour. The brothers, or one of them, usually remained about the house or farm, but on that day they had gone out together in their lorry, leaving the coast clear. I found the back door unlocked and looked into rooms until I found the one in which Grossiter was dozing on the couch.
He began to fire questions at me. Who was I? What did I want? Was I anything to do with the Neasts?
I said I supposed I must be in some way related to the Neasts because they were his nephews. So he said, “Then you’re one of those bloody Hickmansworths, are you?”
I said no, and told him my name.
He stared for a minute, then seemed to relax.
“Bless my soul. Are you indeed? I often wondered what had become of the child. Milly SpaulPs son, eh? Stand in the light. I want to see you.”
He seemed delighted. He asked me what I was doing and about my schooldays, and a good many questions about my mother. He took it for granted that I knew whose son I was and asked if I knew Raymond and his wife had been killed. At last I got a chance to tell him that I wanted to get married and on that he began to ask me searching questions about my affairs and prospects. I answered him frankly and he seemed pleased.
“I’ll see what I can do,” he said. “Don’t count on anything, though. You’re no responsibility of mine, as your mother well knew. But if I can see my way into helping you to get married I may very well do it. Who is the girl?”
I told him about Zelia and he asked what Harris. I explained that Zelia’s father has a senior position in the Borough Surveyor’s office and he seemed reasonably satisfied. Then suddenly he said, “How much do you think you need?”
I decided to be bold and said straight out, 10,000 pounds. He looked a bit sour at that, but presently gave a little smile. “You don’t mind asking for it, do you? Well, we’ll see what we can do. But one thing you can be certain about—you won’t be in my will. I’ve made up my mind to that. No member of my blasted family will be in it. Not one.”
He was a vigorous old boy and talked loudly. It seems incredible to me that he should have died of heart failure only a few days later.
We were interrupted by the entrance of Holroyd Neast, a creepy sort of person, I thought. Grossiter seemed to get pleasure in playing me off against the rest of them.
“Where’s that blasted Darkin?” he shouted at Holroyd Neast. “This young man’s been prevented from coming to see me when he had every right to do so. You hear that? Every right! D’you know anything about it?”
Neast’s ugly grin disappeared.
“No,” he said. “I have never seen this young man.”
That was a lie, to begin with. I’d run into him that very morning.
“Well, Darkin has, and deliberately prevented him from seeing me.”
Darkin came into the room at this minute.
“You’ll be sorry for this,” the old man shouted. “I know very well why you tried to prevent him seeing me and you’ve exactly defeated your own purpose. I’ll see to that. You’ll soon know where you stand. What about his letters? He says he has written half a dozen times. Why have I never received his letters?”
“You have always received every letter that has come for you, Mr. Grossiter,” said Darkin.
“Lies. Lies. But you’ve done yourself no good by this. You’ll find that out one day. Now bring me my tea, you ape. Don’t stand gibbering there!”
He gave me his hand.
“Come and see me again,” he said. “And I’ll see what I can do.”
I walked out feeling as though I was escaping from a snake pit.
I did not go to see him again until early on the Monday afternoon—his last afternoon, as it transpired. I knew the Neasts were out because Mrs. Rudd said they always went to market on Mondays, but I thought Darkin was in the house. I went to the front door, rang the bell and asked to see Mr. Grossiter. He went away to ask, then showed me in.
But the old man was in a very different mood and seemed suspicious about something
“What made you come this afternoon?” he said.
No particular reason, I told him.
“Damned funny you should choose today. I told you you wouldn’t be in my will, didn’t I? Well, you won’t. Not you or any of them. So it’s no good trying to make me change my mind at the last moment.”
I have wondered since what he meant by that and suppose it was because he was expecting his solicitor that afternoon.
“I may or may not have done something else for you, but it’s no good looking for that. The terms are all settled.”
He waved his hand as though he wanted me to go, and I thought it best to leave. Darkin was grinning when I passed him in the passage.
When I came out of the bungalow, it was about half-past three and I decided to walk to the village before returning to Mrs. Rudd’s for tea. I did not go by Church Lane, but took the footpath which runs from the church and cuts off the main curve of Church Lane, joining it near the village at a point opposite to Puckett’s cottage. Had I followed the road, my evidence might be more valuable now for I should’ve passed Humby’s car or seen him driving towards me. As it was, the only human being I saw between the church and the village came up behind and passed me on a bicycle just after I had joined Church Lane. I did not know the man then and he did not turn round to look at me, but I know now it was Stonegate, cycling home early because he was unwell.
After tea I went out again, and standing near the churchyard I heard the Neasts’ lorry coming up the road, and out of sheer curiosity watched. Holroyd Neast was driving it and stopped for a moment at the gate of the bungalow. He got out there and went in while Cyril Neast took over the wheel and came on to the farmyard. He put the lorry in the barn where they always keep it, locked the barn door and walked back to the bungalow. I went back to Mrs. Rudd’s.
I went to bed early that night. I sleep very lightly and some time later was awakened by a light flashing across my eyes. I knew what it was, for it had happened once before. A car with headlights was coming up the lane and turning into the farmyard. Just as it turns in the gate its lights just catch the windows of this cottage. I got up and looked out, but I heard and saw nothing. I looked at my watch and saw it was twenty past twelve. I thought nothing of it at the time.
Perhaps Cyril had been out on the booze and was putting the lorry away. But when I heard afterwards what had happened during the night, I remembered it.
I kept away from the bungalow on the Tuesday, though I heard Grossiter was dead. On Wednesday morning I decided to go over there and ask to see my grandfather before he was put in his coffin. It seemed the least I could do because whether or not he had done anything for me, he had intended to, and I was grateful for that.
Darkin opened the door and I told him what I wanted. He was not actually rude, but took a very superior attitude. He would see, he said, and closed the door on me.
Presently Holroyd came out. He had that smile of his on his face but he did not look friendly.
“You realise, don’t you, that your intrusion on my uncle the day before yesterday may have brought on his last fatal heart attack?”
I said I realised nothing of the sort. As a relation I demanded to see the body.
“I have no right to exclude you from that, though if you had the least respect for him I think you would keep away. However, I shall not judge you. It is not convenient for you to come in now, but the undertaker is not coming until this afternoon. If you come here at about twelve o’clock you will be admitted to the room for a moment or two.”
He then shut the door on me. I went back at noon and was duly shown my grandfather’s body. He looked quite peaceful. There was only one thing I thought rather odd about him. He had shaved his moustache—or it had been shaved off after his death. This seemed to improve him, and in death he looked a kindly and benign person rather than the irritable old gentleman I had known.
I did not go to the cremation. Zelia couldn’t come down to take me and I had no car. Nothing else happened worth recording, in fact, until last night—the night of Saturday, September 25 th.
It was to be my last night in Hallows End. Zelia was coming down very early today, Sunday, to take me back to New-minster in time for lunch so that I could return to work on Monday morning. I went up to my room at about ten o’clock and sat working at some law books I had brought with me, for rather more than an hour, I think. Then I went to bed and slept for some time—I don’t know how long.
I woke suddenly. I do not know what woke me—some noise or light, I supposed. I sat up in bed, fully awake and alert, listening. I could hear nothing, yet I was convinced that there was something to hear. I can’t explain this; I can only say that the silence did not seem natural. I decided to dress and go out.
From the window I saw that a heavy mist hung over the churchyard, almost a fog. I stood there without turning on the light for some minutes, then I thought I heard, distantly through the mist, the sound of digging. It was an eerie sound to hear from a churchyard in the thick darkness of the night.
I dressed in the darkness and very cautiously opened my door. There was another sound audible in the passage, the regular snoring breath of Mrs. Rudd in her room next door to mine. I started to creep downstairs with my shoes in my hand. I reached the front door and very slowly and quietly began to unbar it. I could hear Mrs. Rudd continuing undisturbed above me. I thought I would be able to get out without disturbing her, but just as I was closing it the front door seemed to swing to of its own accord. I had forgotten it had this habit. It seemed to make a loud bang in that silence and I remained where I was, quite motionless and hidden in the porch, for some minutes to see whether Mrs. Rudd would wake and come down. There was not a sound from the cottage, so I concluded she had failed to wake.
I put on my shoes and made for the front gate, then came round to the entrance to the churchyard. I stopped here and listened again. Now I was sure of it—a sound of digging almost as steady and regular as Mrs. Rudd’s snores.
But no light was to be seen anywhere. That was the uncanny part. Two men, I thought by the double spade movements, were digging away somewhere in the churchyard in complete darkness.
Very cautiously, I opened the lych gate and began advancing towards the point from which I thought the sound was coming. As I did so I realised that this was the place where old Harold Rudd had been buried a week ago.
At first I had the absurd idea that this was something to do with the memorial stone which was to go over his grave. I soon dismissed that. Memorial masons don’t deliver their handiwork at midnight and work to set it up without a light. Then what was it? I took a step forward, then suddenly felt a blinding blow on the back of the head. Or did I feel it? I scarcely know if you could call it feeling because it knocked me completely out. Yet somehow in the second before I lost consciousness I knew that this had come from behind me.
The next thing I knew was that I was lying in excruciating pain and deathly cold on a gravel path in the churchyard with the first streaks of dawn above me. I tried to move, but it was a long time before I could do so. Then I staggered across to the cottage and upstairs, knocking on Mrs. Rudd’s door.
She at once called Dr. Jayboard. When he came he cleaned and bound up a wound on the back of my head without asking any questions. Then he enquired how it happened. Some instinct told me not to tell him the truth and I made up a story about coming home after a drink and slipping to crack my head on a gravestone. He seemed to accept this and told me I had had a lucky escape. There was no sign of concussion, he said, and except for a severe headache which I still have, I rapidly began to feel better.
At eight o’clock, while I was having my breakfast, Holroyd Neast came to the cottage and asked to see me. “I hear you’ve had a nasty accident,” he said. “How did it happen?”
I told him I had gone out the night before and must have slipped and cracked my head, for I remembered nothing till I came to in the churchyard. He said he was very sorry and asked if there was anything I wanted. He sounded friendly and I thanked him.
When Zelia arrived soon after, I told her what had happened and she suggested that as soon as we reached her home I should dictate to her the whole story so that I could make a businesslike report. It was she who realised that what I knew might be important in the matter of Humby’s disappearance. So I agreed to do as she asked.
By nine o’clock I felt well enough to return to Newminster with Zelia and it was on the way up that we decided to bring this report to you as you would know best what to do about it. So here it is. If you think the police should have it, please take it to them. To the best of my knowledge and belief it is strictly true in every detail.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
AS CAROLUS REACHED THE end of Spaull’s statement, he looked at his watch. It was 4:35. He stuffed the sheets into his pocket and without waiting to tell Mrs. Stick he was going out, slammed the front door after him. He was out of the town on the road that he had come to know well by which he would reach Hallows End in a little less than an hour and a half of fast driving.
He was engaged in a race—not directly with any human force, but with light. Something had to be done by natural light before the late September evening closed down too far. This was his instant reaction to his reading of Spaull’s story.
He passed the Falstaff Hotel at a little before six o’clock, and slowed down for the winding road to Hallows End. He turned down Church Lane and stopped at the tiny cottage of the gnome-like Puckett. He had already been forced to use his car lights and knew that there was barely time for his purpose. Yet he knew that it would be impossible to hurry Puckett over his divinations without antagonising him. When Puckett opened the door, Carolus appeared to be breathless with the urgency of the moment.
“Oh, Mr. Puckett,” he said. “Could you possibly come with me for a few moments? It’s rather urgent.”
“What’s rather urgent?”
“I want to show you something before the light goes.”
“Show me something? I don’t know what you want to show me. There was a naxident up there last night.”
“I know. It is as a result of that…”
“Something to do with those Neasts. Must be. Though it wasn’t their car that went up and down the road last night, that I do know.”
“Mr. Puckett…”
“I don’t know why you come to me. I don’t know anything about it all. Where do you want to go?”
“I’ll tell you that as we go along.”
“Yes, but go along where? Is it a long way?”
“No. No. You’ll be back here in fifteen minutes.”
“Not going for a long drive, then?”
“No.”
“Because I’ve often wanted to take a ride in a car like that one of yours.”
“Afterwards, if you like. If you’ll come now, straightaway.”
“Oh, I don’t say this evening. One of these days I’d like to, though. I’d like to get back soon if I’m coming with you. In fact, you better leave me up at the church afterwards. It’ll be time for Evening Service. There’s not many comes nowadays but I have to be there.”
“I’m afraid it will be too late if we don’t go soon.”
“Too late for Service? I don’t see how it can be. Fifteen minutes, you said, and Service doesn’t start till six-thirty.”
“I’ll certainly leave you at the church, only could you come now?”
“I’ve got to get my coat on, haven’t I? Can’t go traipsing about the place like I am now. Wait a minute, then, and I’ll get ready.”
Puckett’s preparations did not take long. He was wordy but not slow-moving.
In the car Carolus hurriedly explained.
“I want you to come and look at Harold Rudd’s grave. I rather think it may have been disturbed.”
This seemed to shock Puckett into a silence from which he had not recovered when they reached the lych gate. Puckett almost jumped from the car and led the way across the churchyard to an earthy mound over which nothing had yet grown. This he began to examine from all angles, squinting and moving about like a terrier.
“I don’t know whether Rudd’s been disturbed or not,” he said at last. “But this grave is not how I left it.”
“You mean?”
“I couldn’t say whether it’s all been dug up right down to the coffin, but someone’s had some of it off the top and put it back again, that’s certain. Look at all this clay over the grass here. I should never have left that, and besides it has rained heavy since we buried Rudd to wash that all away if I had of done.”
“You’re sure someone has been digging here, then?”
“Of course I’m sure. I’ve got to go over to the church now, but I’ll tell you what I mean later if you like to wait till after Service. If there’s only him and me the Rector won’t go through with it, not Evening Service that is, though if it was what he calls Marss in the morning there’s nothing would stop him. So I may be free as soon as I’ve put the lights out or I may be half an hour or so, because we can’t have hymns if there’s only two or three of us, can we?”
Carolus waited for a few minutes before driving away, but when he saw a station wagon draw up, and five people leave it to enter the church, he knew that Puckett would be occupied for at least thirty minutes. The five — three men and two women—Carolus had not seen before and he wondered vaguely who they might be. But he passed several more pedestrians, apparently bound for the church, as he drove towards the village. The Rector would have quite a congregation this evening.
He parked his car in the village square and, finding the telephone booth there empty, went in and after some delay got through to Snow’s home. The Detective Sergeant did not sound in the least peeved at being disturbed on a Sunday evening and greeted Carolus amicably.
