After the Exhibition: A Jack Haldean 1920s Mystery (A Jack Haldean Mystery) (9 page)

Under the pressure of Bill’s hands, Jack’s head went back into the corner of the sofa. ‘Now take your hands off my throat, as I don’t fancy being a second victim, but press my head back hard.’ He gave a little yelp of pain.

‘I’m sorry,’ said Bill, standing back. ‘You said to press hard.’

‘It’s not you,’ said Jack between gritted teeth. ‘It’s this damn sofa. As I went back into the angle, the wood gaped apart and trapped my hair.’

He sat up, rubbing the back of his head, then knelt down beside the sofa once more. ‘Let’s see what we’ve got. A couple of short hairs – mine – and this longer dark one to add to our previous hair. And, judging by what we’ve just seen, I think the only way hair can be trapped in the frame is if someone is exerting force from above.’ He glanced up at Betty. ‘One up to you, Miss Wingate. Does Signora Bianchi have long dark hair?’

‘She has dark hair, certainly,’ said Betty. ‘I don’t really know how long it is. She always wears it up.’

Bill put the long hairs in an envelope and made a note on the outside. ‘I’ll keep these. It’s some sort of evidence, at any rate.’

‘What did you do after you saw the body?’ asked Jack.

‘That’s when I was attacked. I remember the ghastly smell of the cloth over my mouth. When I came round I was incredibly thirsty and it was pitch dark. I found my way into the kitchen. The curtains were open and the moon was shining. I was able to find the sink in the moonlight and I had a drink and splashed my face with water. Then I realised that the kitchen door was open and I heard footsteps outside. I was really scared.’

‘You poor kid,’ said Jack sympathetically.

‘I panicked. I ran for the front door and got myself out of the house and up the street as fast as I could. Then I met Colin and the rest you know.’ She looked at them ruefully. ‘He couldn’t find a thing and nor could anyone else.’

‘Let’s see if we can do better,’ said Jack. ‘Have you any idea how long you were unconscious for?’

Betty shrugged. ‘I’ve thought about it, obviously. I can’t say for certain, but it must have been a few hours. The train arrived at quarter to nine and it was after midnight when Colin came along. I suppose it must’ve taken me twenty minutes or so to walk here from the station, so say I was knocked out at half past nine or so. That’s about as close as I can get.’

‘That means you were out cold for about two and a bit hours,’ said Jack thoughtfully. ‘Now in that time, our murderer was doing … what?’

‘Moving the body, obviously,’ said Bill. ‘It wasn’t here when Askern looked through the windows, so he has to have moved it in that time.’

‘Exactly. Shall we have a look in the kitchen? That might give us a clue where he moved it to.’

The kitchen, with steps down to the adjacent scullery, was, like the other rooms in the cottage, small. A stone sink stood under the window and an unlit cooking range against the opposite wall.

Jack looked out of the window. The cottage had a long back garden with a line of trees at the bottom, separating the garden from the fields beyond. An old wooden fence ran across the back of the garden, with a gate leading to the fields beyond. Between the trees the land fell away, but rising in the distance, about a field’s width away, was an imposing stone building that looked like a church with a dome.

‘What’s that building between the trees?’

‘That’s the chantry,’ said Betty. ‘It belongs to Colin’s firm, Lythewell and Askern. It looks like a chapel but there’s never been a service said in it, as far as I know. Mr Lythewell’s father built it years ago.’ She grinned. ‘Colin hates the chantry. He reckons it’s a mausoleum with some of the worst art he’s ever seen.’

Jack turned to Bill. ‘What d’you think, Bill? It’s quite a landmark, isn’t it? A good place to hide a body, perhaps?’

Bill gave a dismissive laugh. ‘It
could
be. So could plenty of other places. Why don’t we look outside? As Miss Wingate heard steps approaching the back door. it’s not too great a stretch to say the murderer took the body out that way. We might,’ he added hopefully, ‘find it in the coal bunker or something.’

‘And I thought I was the optimistic one,’ muttered Jack. He led the way down the steps and through the scullery, with its copper for the wash and collection of mops and zinc buckets, to the back door.

Immediately outside the cottage was a small paved yard with a dustbin and a coal bunker. The flagstones of the yard were green with algae. Beyond the yard ran the garden path, covered with cinders. It divided the garden in two, running through the patchy grass of the lawn and vegetable plot, leading to a low brick-built building that, Jack guessed, had once been a pigsty.

In deference to Bill’s suggestion, he looked in the coal bunker, which, predictably, contained nothing but coal, then crunched down the garden path towards the sty.

Betty gave a little cry and the colour left her cheeks. ‘That’s it! That’s the noise I heard that night!’

Jack paused and pressed his foot experimentally into the cinders. ‘What, my footsteps you mean? It’d certainly be a very sinister sound after the experience you’d been through.’

‘It was,’ said Betty with feeling. ‘I’ve never been as scared in all my life.’

The pigsty, a small, uncovered yard and roofed shelter, obviously hadn’t been used for years. The gate which led into the yard stood open, hanging from one hinge, firmly wedged in the mud.

‘Hullo,’ said Jack, stooping and pointing to the rutted mud. ‘Look at this, Bill. The mud’s pretty churned up, but do those look like footprints to you?’

Bill examined the marks with a frown. ‘They’re not very clear. There’s been a fair old bit of rain in the last week, so we’d have no hope of matching them to a particular shoe, but yes, I’d say they were footprints.’ He stood up and looked over the wall of the sty. ‘There’s some gardener’s tools in the covered part of the shed. Maybe the prints belong to the gardener.’

‘That one doesn’t,’ said Jack, pointing to a print which was protected by the shelter of the wall. It was the print of half a heel, sharply incised into the mud. ‘That’s an ordinary shoe, not a gardener’s boot.’

Bill nodded. ‘You’re right. Don’t go in through the gate. I want to keep those footprints as they are.’ He sat on the low wall and swung himself over into the sty. Jack followed him.

The inside of the shed was evidently used by Signora Bianchi’s gardener. A spade, a hoe, a fork and a rake stood against the wall, with more tools and a collection of plant-pots on a roughly-made shelf. A wooden wheelbarrow occupied one corner, and two packing cases, clearly used as a chair and table, took up the rest of the room. A pile of sacks, an old newspaper and the stub of a candle stuck onto an old plant-pot holder stood on the packing-case table.

Jack stood with his head to one side for a moment, then, taking the handles of the wheelbarrow, pushed it out into the light. He crouched down beside it and examined it carefully. ‘This wood’s fairly rough, Bill,’ he said, running his hand over the grain. ‘Granted that our murderer came down the path and, judging from the footprint, came into the sty, I’m hoping that there might be something here for us.’

‘There is!’ cried Betty, craning over the wall of the sty. ‘I saw something flutter in the breeze. By the handle. Can you see it?’

It was a snag of brown silk, nearly impossible to see against the wood of the wheelbarrow.

Bill gave a whistle and, detaching the threads, held them on the palm of his hand. ‘This,’ he said seriously, ‘is shaping up to look like real evidence. Well spotted, Miss Wingate.’

‘I only saw it because it moved.’ She swallowed. ‘Mr Rackham, does this mean you believe me?’

‘I believe
something
’s happened here,’ said Bill. ‘I can’t think of any legitimate reason why a gardener should carry silk around in a wheelbarrow.’ He put the silk threads into an envelope.

‘Do we assume the murderer put the body in the wheelbarrow and took it through the gate?’ asked Jack.

‘Why not?’ said Bill. ‘It’s as good an idea as any.’

The garden gate led onto a tussocky field. A couple of hundred yards away, a flock of brown-faced sheep looked at them enquiringly with their mild eyes, then returned to their placid grazing. A rough path led round the edge of the field.

‘You take that way, Bill,’ said Jack, pointing left, ‘and I’ll take right.’

‘What are you looking for?’ asked Betty.

‘Traces of the wheelbarrow,’ said Jack. ‘It’d be a pig to push over the field, so I’m assuming it was taken along the path.’

They set off, carefully scanning the ground. It was only a few minutes before Jack gave a call.

‘Bill! Miss Wingate! I’ve found something.’

The path had narrowed and the paling fence enclosing the cottage gardens had been replaced by wooden posts and strands of barbed wire. On the other side of the fence the ground fell away into a scrub of trees and hummocky ground.

‘Here, Bill,’ said Jack as the others joined him. He pointed to the path. ‘That’s a wheelbarrow track.’ His eyes were bright with discovery. ‘You can see how the tracks are confused. The ground’s pretty bumpy and I think the wheelbarrow slipped and went into the fence.’ He pointed to the barbed wire. ‘What’s more, look at this.’ On the barbed wire were caught a few more threads of fine brown silk.

‘Got him,’ breathed Bill in satisfaction. He added the brown threads to his envelope and made a note. Then he stepped back and looked at the rough ground beyond the fence. ‘I wonder if the body’s been dumped in the woods?’

Jack scrambled under the barbed wire and, bent double, examined the ground carefully. ‘I can’t see any sign of the leaves being disturbed,’ he said eventually. ‘That’s not to say they haven’t been, of course, but let’s follow the path to the end.’ He ducked back under the wire. ‘Do you know where the path comes out, Miss Wingate?’ he asked, turning to her.

She thought for a moment. ‘I can’t say I’ve ever been along here before, but I suppose if it comes out anywhere, it’ll run down to the road leading to Lythewell and Askern and the chantry.’

‘I said it was a good landmark,’ said Jack with a smile. ‘Come on.’

They found traces of the wheelbarrow at intervals along the path, before the ground opened out and ran down to where a field gate barred the entrance to the road. The mud, churned with the feet of sheep and cattle, was clearly useless for spotting any more prints.

Jack latched the gate shut behind them as they walked out onto the road.

The road was wide, bending away from the outskirts of the village. The buildings of Lythewell and Askern were a few hundred yards away, but dominating the surroundings, surrounded by a low stone wall, stood the chantry. They crossed the road and looked over the wall.

The chantry was a brick-built, domed building and looked exactly like a small Victorian Italianate chapel. It even had a noticeboard, red with gold lettering, which looked as if it should carry the name of the chapel and times of services. What it actually said was:
Property of Lythewell and Askern. Church Artists, Furnishers and Monumental Masons. Private.

Although the grass on the slope running up to the chantry was mown, the building had a cut-off, neglected look. Beyond the chantry the road bent round to a yard housing a series of single-storey brick buildings from which they could hear sounds of intermittent hammering and shouted instructions.

‘Those are the workshops and offices,’ said Betty. ‘Colin should be here at this time of day. Shall we go and find him? I’d like to tell him that you’ve proved I’m not making it all up.’

Bill hesitated. ‘Just for the moment, Miss Wingate, I must ask you to not mention anything to anyone about what we’ve discovered.’

Betty looked muleish. ‘Why not? That’s why I asked you to come here in the first place, to prove I wasn’t dreaming things.’

‘Not to discover what happened to Signora Bianchi?’ Jack asked mildly.

Betty had the grace to look ashamed. ‘Well, that too, of course.’

‘That’s certainly why we came,’ said Bill. ‘You were convinced you’d seen a murder and, on the strength of what we’ve found, I certainly agree there’s something which merits investigation. However, a murder means there’s a murderer.’

‘That’s right. I heard him, remember?’ said Betty with a shudder.

‘Well, the last thing we want to do is to give him any sort of warning.’

‘I was only going to tell Colin!’

Jack lit a cigarette. What Betty Wingate didn’t seem to realise – what had obviously never crossed her mind – was that Colin Askern could easily be the man they were looking for.

Judging from both the portrait photograph and the village gossip, Colin Askern had a warm relationship with Signora Bianchi; he was on the spot when Betty had made her escape, and he was the one who had first visited the scene of the crime. He could’ve easily carried the body down the garden path to the pigsty either while Betty was unconscious or, with Betty safely in the car, when he was supposed to be looking through the windows. With Betty on the spot as an eye witness to the fact that there’d been a body, it wouldn’t take much thought to realise that the police were going to be called in sooner rather than later.

It was Colin Askern, albeit with Betty’s prompting, who’d taken Constable Shaw to Signora Bianchi’s cottage. Jack was prepared to eat his hat if Colin Askern hadn’t been radiating disbelief to the constable. That sort of mood was very catching. Constable Shaw wouldn’t be human if he didn’t find the idea of a hysterical, over-imaginative woman far easier to comprehend than a mysterious death involving the still more mysterious disappearance of a body.

He glanced enquiringly at Bill. Bill gave a very slight shake of his head. They were clearly thinking more or less the same thing.

‘Please don’t tell him, Miss Wingate,’ urged Jack, softening the words with a smile. ‘I can understand why you want to, but from what you’ve said, it sounds as if Askern was fairly attached to Signora Bianchi. If you convince him she really has been murdered, he’s not going to keep it to himself, is he? He’s going to kick up a dickens of a fuss and demand a proper investigation.’

‘You don’t realise what it’s been like,’ said Betty reluctantly. ‘I
hate
everyone thinking I’ve been seeing things.’