Death on Allhallowe’en, page 9
He also decided that Rutters was a bit of a bully, and like most bullies unsure of himself. He could probably deflate him with a few sharp words, the names of his superior officers and a hectoring manner of his own. But it wasn’t worth while. The man, after all, had a dreary job and the character of Sherlock Holmes, in which Carolus remembered he appeared, could scarcely be a favourite one with the modern police force. He did not move from his place or make any further answer and after a moment, as he anticipated, Rutters moved away.
Just then Drummer Sloman arrived dressed in the full regalia of a cowboy. He and Rutters were evidently old enemies.
‘Now, young Drummer, you behave yourself tonight. I don’t want any trouble with you.’
‘That’s okay, Sheriff,’ said Drummer good-humouredly. ‘You can call off your posse for tonight.’
‘Want to be funny, eh,’ said Rutters angrily.
‘Oh, come on, Charlie,’ Drummer said to his brother. Charlie followed him, dressed as a devil. ‘Let the Sheriff cool off.’
They went into the hall, from which could be heard the microphone-magnified voice of Horseman. ‘Take your partners for …’ A roar of laughter drowned the rest. But the laughter was good-humoured. Horseman was evidently a popular character here.
Margaret Lark, a somewhat skinny Scheherazade, wheeled in her husband who was not in costume, William Garries in sombrero and cloak, Ebby Smith and his daughter, neither of them in costume, had already gone in, and Carolus was wondering about Xavier Matchlow when he arrived in a car driven by his wife. He wore his plum-coloured velvet smoking-jacket with a black tie and patent-leather shoes, and with his thick long silver hair looked picturesque enough to dispense with further costume. Judith looked charming as an Edwardian with a harem skirt and a large hat.
Carolus decided to enter. He nodded to Rutters as though they were old friends and went into the lighted hall.
The atmosphere here was entirely unexpected. The older people congregated round the bar in apparently friendly and cheerful conversation and the younger ones entirely dominated the proceedings. The members of the band were youngsters and would have appeared to dancers of a previous generation to be a collection of lunatics, and the dancers jerked their heads, waved their arms, waggled their bottoms, swayed and twisted and gesticulated, unrestrained by propriety or any sense of dignity. They sought the ridiculous, the grotesque, the uninhibited.
It could not be said that they looked happy. They were intent on doing their thing and proceeded with a semi-idiot purposefulness with their strange gyrations, but did not watch one another or expect to be watched. There was no laughter among them and only occasional smiles.
Carolus saw Horseman, jerking and circling with the rest. He was dressed as a sailor and the inappropriate uniform made him look bulky and older than his age. When he got up to announce the next dance he did so, as John had predicted, from the lectern left there from the time when the hall had been a chapel. It stood to the left, but a little in the rear of the band, and when Horseman had spoken he gave a peremptory tap on the lectern with a baton as though conducting. The band played up to this by turning to him and pretending to take their time from him. Although this piece of foolery was repeated with every dance it seemed to please Horseman’s audience. It was evident that he was regarded as a funny man with a joke for every announcement and roused laughter and cheers. It made Carolus feel uncomfortable.
Carolus joined the group at the bar.
‘I thought young people nowadays had more discernment,’ Alice Murrain was saying. ‘How they can stand that bloated idiot making a fool of himself I shall never know.’
Carolus looked at Alice in her Puritan dress and wondered which was more ridiculous, Horseman with the favour he curried from youth, or Alice with her occult pretensions. He felt mischievous.
‘Couldn’t you do something about him?’ he whispered. ‘Strike him dumb, or something? Just temporarily, of course.’
At first Alice looked as though she would have preferred to use her powers on Carolus, but she gained control of herself and turned away.
‘I had a nice run down to Margate today,’ Carolus observed chattily.
Alice Murrain did not answer, and not very long afterwards she and her husband left the hall, apparently in disgust.
Carolus saw that in the group round the bar was a face he had never consciously seen. He had not noticed him entering the hall or at any other time, and decided that this was not strange as he was one of those men who are by nature unnoticeable. Hair and eyes of no particular colour, insignificant features, characterless clothes, he spoke little and in an undistinguished voice. Just now he was talking to Ronald Lark, but neither seemed much interested in their conversation.
Carolus saw Judith across the hall. She had been dancing with one of the young men and looked flushed and vivid in contrast with the stranger.
‘Tell me,’ he said, ‘who is that talking to Ronald Lark?’
‘Where? Oh, yes. That’s Poley Grant. I told you about him. Some kind of journalist.’
Carolus started to make his way back to the group, but when he reached it the man had left. He did not see him again.
He approached Ronald Lark.
‘Were you talking to a man named Poley Grant?’
‘Was I? I didn’t notice,’ Lark said and Carolus could well believe him.
The evening wore on to the inevitable denouement of midnight. There was no rowdiness, and only one brief scene between Margaret Lark and Cicely Gunning in which they raised accusing voices and became the centre of attention—though no one seemed able to discover the cause. Their repective husbands were together near the bar at the time and pointedly had a drink together as though to dissociate themselves from their wives’ tantrums. Then Horseman announced another dance and all went on as before.
But it was, thought Carolus, a very odd scene, one of the oddest in his memory. The people themselves were odd, the place and the occasion, and there was undoubtedly, in his own mind at least, a sense of tension. He could not have defined it more accurately than a belief that something was going to happen. Absurd, he told himself. He was being caught up in this village hocus-pocus, and yet he felt that the evening would not end in a commonplace scattering to their homes of such a disparate gathering brought together by such unguessable motives.
There was a tradition in Clibburn, perhaps going back to the time when church and chapel both had been treated with more consideration, that dances of Saturday nights should end before midnight to satisfy the most watchful sabbatarians. This tradition was still respected, and shortly before twelve o’clock Horseman stood behind his lectern and moved his mouth close to the microphone. The last waltz was finished, John Stainer had left the hall, the room was quiet, and the band stood with their instruments poised ready to play the National Anthem.
‘We come,’ said Horseman, ‘to the witching hour of midnight At the first stroke of the church clock our revels now are ended and the band will play God Save the Queen.’ He held his baton in readiness.
Everyone waited for the sound of the chime, but instead came another, the explosion of a number of fire-crackers, which went off in front of the hall. Charlie Sloman was having his practical joke and filled the hall with a nauseating smell and caused shrieks and dismay among the closely packed people there. What was more, it continued for several moments and the stroke of the church clock was inaudible.
Horseman, seeming a little put out by this disturbance of his act, tapped irritably for the band.
Carolus was standing quite near Horseman and watching him closely. What he actually saw was straightforward tragedy—Horseman falling behind the lectern and collapsing sideways to the ground. But he was aware of more than that. He was not conscious of hearing a shot or seeing anything beyond the collapse, yet he knew that a shot had been fired. Horseman had been shot through the heart, and death must have been instantaneous for no sound came from the prone figure.
The fire-crackers continued to explode, and at first those who had actually been watching Horseman realised what had happened. The pistol shot had been indistinguishable among the noise of the fire-crackers. But after a very quick examination of the dead man, Carolus acted with decision. He left those near to gather round Horseman’s body and hurried out to Rutters.
‘A man’s been shot,’ he said. ‘Keep everybody in at this door and I’ll go round the back and hold the others.’
The policeman was so surprised that he obeyed.
‘No one may leave,’ he said importantly to the first who tried to make a bolt for it. Then, gaining confidence, he said, ‘Keep calm. Just sit down, please. No one may leave the hall till the police officers arrive. Dr Richards, will you look after the wounded man?’
Carolus ran round to the back and was just in time to find Albert Gunning coming through the door, followed by Cicely.
‘I’m sorry,’ Carolus said. ‘I’ve been asked by the police to prevent anyone leaving.’
Albert, no longer the calm and civil man whom Carolus had known, shouted, ‘Who the hell are you? My wife’s got to have some fresh air. Get out of the way!’
It could have been a very unpleasant scene. Gunning was roused to fury. But Cicely said, ‘Albert! Albert, don’t!’
Carolus suggested that Mrs Gunning should sit in the doorway in the fresh air.
‘I’m sorry, Albert,’ he said. ‘But the police are right, you know. Horseman is dead.’
‘Yes,’ said Mr Lark, who had joined them. ‘I heard Dr Richards say he’d been shot through the heart.’
‘You can see that the police must prevent everyone from leaving.’
Albert was calmer.
‘I suppose so, if there’s been a murder.’
‘Look here, Albert. Will you hold on here for a while? I must go round and let Rutters phone the station. You won’t let anyone out, will you?’
’All right. No one’ll go till the police come.’
Carolus went back to Rutters.
‘I can hold them if you want to phone the station,’ he said.
‘I don’t know what to do. I must get ‘em here straight away, but I oughtn’t to leave this job to anyone else.’
‘You can’t do two things at once. You can trust me, you know.’
Rutters went and Carolus took over his position. Most people in the hall had settled down. The doctor remained by the bulky figure of the dead man, looking grotesque in its unsuitable sailor’s uniform. There was a hum and mutter of conversation in the room.
Rutters returned from the phone.
‘The police van will be here in ten minutes,’ he announced to those round the door. Then to Carolus, ‘The sergeant’s coming. I shall be glad to hand this lot over to him, I can tell you. Had any trouble?’
‘None at all,’ said Carolus, and as he spoke he thought what an extraordinary thing it was that none of those in the hall had demanded to be released. He would have thought the teenagers, notoriously rebellious, would have made a rush for it. But even more, he would have supposed that William Garries, who had already shown his hostility to Carolus, or Xavier Matchlow, who wasn’t a man to accept authority, would have asked him his business there and tried to leave. He remembered this strange acquiescence later.
Carolus returned to Albert Gunning.
‘All quiet?’ he asked.
‘Yes. One or two of the young ones had a try to get out, but I soon settled that.’
‘Good. Won’t be long now.’
‘I hope you don’t think there was anything funny about me making for this door when it happened. Only, see, the wife gets very upset with anything like that and I thought I’d better get her out to the air.’
‘I quite understand.’
’I hope you do. I shouldn’t like you to think I had anything to hide.’
‘That’s all right, Albert.’
‘Because it’s known that I never cared for Horseman and half blamed him over Cyril…’
‘I didn’t think anything like that. I simply co-operated with the police in keeping everyone in.’
Albert did not seem satisfied.
‘As long as you feel like that about it,’ he said doubtfully.
‘Albert wouldn’t hurt a fly,’ put in Cicely.
Carolus had said all he could and left the Gunnings. He made his way across to the group at the bar.
Matchlow, looking very calm and still elegant, said, ‘How much longer are we to be kept here?’
‘Don’t ask me,’ said Carolus. ‘It’s a police affair.’
‘You seem to be in their confidence.’
‘Not at all. Rutters has phoned for some senior officers.’
‘That’s good. They may have some sense. Do you suppose they’ll want to search us?’
‘I have no idea. I should, in their place, but I’m not a policeman.’
‘That fellow Horseman has caused nothing but trouble ever since he came here.’
‘He won’t cause any more,’ said Carolus drily.
He left the group and went back to Rutters.
‘What about Horseman’s wife?’ he said. ‘Oughtn’t she to be told?’
The policeman no longer resented Carolus, who had helped him in a tricky situation and did not want any credit for it.
‘I suppose she did,’ he said, with one of those breaches of syntax which particularly delighted Carolus. ‘Tell you what,’ he added after a moment’s thought. ‘I’ll leave that to the sergeant. He should be here at any minute. He’ll send someone to tell her, and I hope it won’t be me. Not the sort of job I go for.’
‘Just a sergeant coming?’
’I don’t know. I made my report to the station. I shouldn’t be surprised if he picks up the CID on the way. After all, it looks like murder.’
‘It is murder. What else could it be? And a very well-planned murder, too.’
Lights were visible in the lane, and in a few seconds a police car stopped. A sergeant in uniform and two plain-clothes men alighted and crossed to Rutters. Carolus drifted inconspicuously away.
Ten
The police were competent and courteous. The ladies were asked to show the contents of their bags to a policewoman and allowed to leave when they had given their names and addresses to one of the plain-clothes men. The men also gave their names, and after asking the permission of each—in no case refused—one of the CID men quickly frisked them. They, too, were released.
But when Drummer Sloman swaggered up to the officers there was some excitement because a pistol was still in his holster.
‘What’s this?’
‘A .38 revolver,’ replied Drummer.
‘Is it your own property?’
‘No.’
‘Where did you get it?’
‘A friend lent it to me. For the dance.’
‘For the dance?’
‘Yeah. Can’t you see this is a Western outfit I’m wearing?’
‘What friend? What’s his name?’
‘I’m not saying.’
One of the policemen examined the weapon. It was unloaded.
‘A shot has recently been fired from one chamber of this revolver.’
‘Go on!’ said Drummer cheerfully.
‘Did you fire that shot?’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
There was a long tense pause.
‘You’ll come with us for questioning,’ said the policeman.
‘Okay,’ said Drummer, who did not appear to take the matter seriously.
‘And your younger brother.’
‘You might let my mum know then. She’ll be waiting up.’
Many versions of this incident were carried away by those dispersing and in a short time went through the village. Drummer Sloman had fired the shot which had killed Horseman and had been charged with murder, Drummer Sloman had been taken away for questioning, Drummer Sloman had supplied the revolver with which Horseman was killed, and so on.
Carolus went up to the sergeant. He had removed his cape and deerstalker.
‘I think I should tell you that I was standing beside that young man when the shot was fired,’ he said.
‘And?’
‘He didn’t fire it.’
‘Who are you?’
‘My name is Deene. I’m staying in the village.’
‘Very well, Mr Deene. Let me have your name and address. If we need your testimony we will call on you.’
He continued with the remainder of the public. No other revolver was found on any of them. The members of the band were advised to take their instruments with them as the hall would be locked up for some time while it was under examination. Carolus watched them as they carried out their drums and saxophones. They were in a hurry to escape and their leader had not waited to put his instrument in its case, but carried both. Ebby Smith looked about him in a rather baffled way—he took his responsibilities seriously and perhaps wondered when he would be able to clear up the mess in the hall.
When everyone was out of the hall except the two CID men the doors were closed. Carolus guessed that they were waiting for the experts and photographers before removing the body, and in the meantime would search everywhere in the hall for another weapon.
He decided not to wait until the unfortunate experts had been summoned from their beds, for he would of course be excluded from the examination of the corpse, which remained untouched, and he was likely to learn nothing at all of their conclusions until the inquest.
At the rectory he found John Stainer and Ron and Margaret Lark together round a fire.
‘I’ve brought Mrs Horseman back here,’ Margaret Lark said, in the solemnity of the occasion indulging in no abbreviations. ‘Dr Richards gave her a couple of pastilles and she’s sleeping quite peacefully. It was, of course, a terrible shock.’
‘It is for everyone,’ said John.
No one suggested by the least word or sign that Carolus was in any way to blame, yet he felt that among them was some doubt as to whether he could not have prevented the tragedy.
