Death on Allhallowe’en (16 page)

‘What I resented most was Xavier's influence on Willie Garries. Willie had been brought up rather strictly by his parents, and as a youth was well thought of. He was a Scout leader and in the choir. But he stopped coming to church. His father died during the war, when he was about thirty, and, like Matchlow, he inherited. It was a fine farm and I dare say still is, though I'm told that the sort of mixed farming of those days is no longer profitable. Then there was the unfortunate affair of his marriage to a London girl.'

‘Why unfortunate?'

‘She never cared for Clibburn or the life of a farm. She was a good-looking girl, fond of the pleasures of those days, and she found it too quiet. Then during the last war we had the Canadians in Guys and Elsie Garries started to be seen about with them. It was quite a scandal and Willie Garries was a changed man, embittered and short-tempered. A son was born during the war, but after the German surrender Elsie ran away to Canada with an officer she had met two years earlier. Willie Garries was desperate. I even feared suicide, and if it hadn't been for little George I think he might have done that terrible
thing. All this time he remained on friendly terms with Xavier Matchlow. I'm not boring you?'

‘Far from it. Please go on.'

With a pleased smile the Canon continued.

‘Then three years later, to everyone's amazement, Elsie returned. Nothing was known in the village of this before it happened, and it was all the more surprising because on the next Sunday they appeared in church together, with their little son. I was delighted, but unfortunately it did not last. After scarcely a year of reunion Elsie went as suddenly as she had come. The postman—you know what small villages are—denied that he had been delivering letters to her from Canada.

‘Her disappearance was so sudden and mysterious that it caused a lot of talk and even, I believe, some official enquiries. But later Willie received a letter from Canada in which she said that she would never come back and that, so far as we heard, was the end of her. Soon afterwards I was offered another living, in a large industrial town, and left Clibburn.'

‘With regret?'

‘There were regrets, of course. I had known some happiness there. But I think I felt chiefly relief. There was always something eerie about Clibburn, like an evil presence in the place. I hope that doesn't sound exaggerated. It is what I felt and your friend Father Stainer admits that he has similar feelings sometimes.'

‘Due to Matchlow?'

‘One hesitates to blame any individual and Xavier Matchlow had a charming manner when he pleased. But this indefinable thing did seem to centre round him. After Willie Garries's wife left him Willie seemed to be more completely dependent on his friendship with Matchlow, and as little George grew up he was often with them. Garries never came to church again and when I attempted to see him he avoided me.

‘Matchlow scarcely ever left the village now. Crowley had died just after the war, I believe, and Matchlow had gone on seeing him to the last. But then he remained in the House,
except for an occasional day's shooting. He was quite a recluse, and Garries was the only person who saw much of him. He seemed to have some hold over Willie—all part of that devil's work of Crowley's perhaps.'

‘You haven't told me about Alice Murrain.'

‘That was another rather mysterious thing. You know, I don't like to speak in these terms, but Alice always was a very strange woman. There was something secretive in her manner and the village people really believed she had some extraordinary powers. Nonsense? So it may have been, but it was
there.
If one tried to tell them it was ridiculous, and ask how they could believe such rubbish, they grinned in a shame-faced way and agreed with one, but never changed their attitude to Alice. She went in for herbalism—quite a harmless interest, like vegetarianism, when it is considered without superstitious undertones. I dare say certain natural remedies are good, though doubtless the pharmacopoeia makes better use of them than the crude herbalists of the countryside. But when Alice prescribed something it was believed to have supernatural properties. I know this is a large question and half the cures made by medicine, either prescribed by the doctor or brewed by some herbalist in whose powers the sufferer believes, are psychological. Up to a point a lot of good may be done in this way. But people are credulous, and if they see that
good
may be wrought they believe that
evil
too can come from a knowledge of herbs and so on. Alice was thought to be able to cure skin diseases or headaches, so it was only a step further to think that she could induce them, too. In other words, she was both respected and feared as so-called witches used to be.

‘She was thought to be in love with Xavier Matchlow, and she must have lost prestige when she failed to attract him—even by her own love-potions, if she had any. As you know, she left the village. It was said that she put a curse on it. She returned just before the outbreak of the last war and she brought this man Murrain to whom she was married. She never told anyone where she had been or what she had done during the
nine years of her absence. And although she did nothing and said nothing to make people think so, there were rumours that she was still devoted to Matchlow. There was something very queer and incongruous about this suggestion. Whatever may have been thought when they were both young, no one could imagine these two people in any way related now. Xavier was a highly cultured man who lived a civilised and, in some ways, elegant life, Alice was more than ever a countrywoman with no culture but that of rustic lore. Besides, Alice was married. The suggestion that there could be anything between them was, as someone said to me, grotesque. Yet the suggestion was made.'

‘Yes. I see,' said Carolus. ‘Tell me, did you know a man called Albert Gunning?'

‘Albert? He was in my choir when I first came to Clibburn. A dear little boy. He was in the last war and did very well, I believe. He was the village blacksmith's son, and his father left a little money which he spent on building a petrol station and garage near where the old forge had stood, and Father Stainer tells me he has done very well. He was a talented chap.'

Carolus said nothing about Cyril, and when Miss Copely came in to tell her father he had talked enough he felt somewhat guilty.

‘I'm afraid I've encouraged Canon Copely,' he said. ‘I hope I have not tired him. It has been quite fascinating to me.'

‘All about Clibburn, wasn't it?' said Miss Copely indifferently. ‘I can scarcely remember the place. Have some tea?'

Carolus excused himself and thanked the old gentleman once again.

‘I understand you're trying to clear up all their mysteries,' said Miss Copely. ‘I hope you're successful.'

‘I'm trying to find a murderer,' said Carolus shortly, and before she could recover from this took his leave.

‘Those coppers aren't mad on you, Carolus. I can tell you that,' said Drummer Sloman, stretched in an armchair in John Stainer's study during his absence. ‘But one of them told me you'd offered to give evidence for me. Told them you were standing beside me when the shot was fired. They didn't need it, as a matter of fact. The penny dropped that I couldn't have pulled a gun and shot Horseman with people all round me. Still, it was good of you to say what you did.'

‘I didn't say you weren't responsible, in some way. I only said that you hadn't fired the shot.'

‘That's what they're on to now. They seem to think I'd handed the gun to someone else, then taken it back afterwards. First of all, there's no one I know of who's a good enough shot with a revolver to have killed Horseman from the hall. Secondly, I
didn't
lend it to anyone. Thirdly, it wasn't loaded.'

‘But a shot had been fired from it recently.'

A gloomy silence fell on Drummer.

‘How do you think he was killed then?' asked Carolus quietly.

‘I'd like to know as much as you would. I'm still under suspicion and it worries the old lady to death.'

‘I'm trying to find out, Drummer. Will you help me?'

‘How?'

‘By answering all the questions I ask you. Even if you think they have nothing to do with it, or involve your friends.'

‘I've told the police all I know.'

'But you haven't told me.'

‘There's nothing else to tell, really.'

‘Let me be the judge of that. Will you?'

‘Okay. What d'you want to know?'

‘First of all, about this man Poley Grant.'

‘I thought that was coming. I can't tell you where he is or anything about his private life because I just don't know anything.'

‘When did you first meet him?'

‘Must have been about a month back. He fell into conversation with me in the White Horse. He said he was on a paper and trying to get a story out of Clibburn because he'd heard it was a funny sort of place where people believed in witchcraft and whatnot. I said, why come to me? I don't believe in any of that. He said that was just how I could help him. Then he bought me a couple of drinks and asked me a lot of questions, and when he went off gave me a fiver.'

‘Went off? What did he go in? Had he a car?'

‘He used to come in a car, but I noticed it was a different car each time. I thought that was something to do with his newspaper and didn't take much notice, but it seems funny now.

‘Then there was all that about scaring Horseman. He didn't say why, but he said he wanted the life scared out of him. I'd fallen out with Horseman—doesn't matter what over—and I said I didn't mind doing it, for a joke like. The police know all about this—so you needn't worry about telling them. Poley said when I had an opportunity one night to fire over his head, or behind his tail or somewhere, to scare him. So one night when I heard he was going alone to the rectory to discuss the dance with John …'

‘Father Stainer,' corrected Carolus.

‘
Father
Stainer, I waited in the churchyard. Only young Charlie came along and spoilt the show. Charlie's a bit simple sometimes about anything like that, and he thought I was going to take a pot at old Horseman and jerked the gun up in
the air. The shot hit Murrain's roof, so there you are.'

‘Did you see Gerald Murrain that night?'

‘I saw someone swinging a torch about in the road, but I didn't know it was Gerald. At any rate, Poley came over next night and said I'd scared Horseman quite enough and gave me a tenner. I'd got quite friendly with him by this time, and no one says no to fivers and tenners chucked about like that. He got on to young Charlie, too. We never saw any harm in him. At the time, that is.'

‘And now?'

‘Well, let me tell you the rest. I've told it to the police, and they don't seem to think much of Mr Poley Grant. Trouble is they can't find him. No one noticed him much around here—he wasn't the sort of type you'd notice. I tried to give them a description, but it sounded as though I was covering up for him. There was nothing you could get hold of. He wasn't tall or short or fat or thin; there was nothing you noticed about his face, and he dressed like a lot of people.

‘Anyway, he was mad keen on the dance. That was when he was going to get his big story. He suggested that cowboy outfit for me and told me to hire it from a firm he gave me the name of in London. It seemed quite a good idea—I enjoy anything like that. He was going to bring cameramen and television cameras and God knows what, and he got me quite interested. You know, television and that. And it was him bought young Charlie these fire-crackers and told him to let them off dead on twelve o'clock, when old Horseman was up at his lectern.'

Carolus, watching Drummer, saw no sign of hesitation or shiftiness or embarrassment. He might have been recalling the plot of a film he had seen.

‘He turned up on the night. He asked if they hadn't sent me a gun to go with the costume, and when I told him not to be silly, people don't pass guns around like that, he said he'd lend me one. He didn't say where he'd got it from, but he had it in the car—the .38 revolver there's been all the fuss about.
What the bastard didn't tell me was that a shot had been fired from it.

‘You may think I was pretty silly, and it certainly looks like it now when we know what happened. But not at the time. I wasn't to know someone would get shot and I saw nothing wrong with this chap Grant. For all I know, there may not have been, only why has he sheered off? And why did he hand me a gun from which a bullet had been fired? And why can't they find him now? And why, come to that, did he ask me to meet him in the gallery of the hall at midnight?'

‘That's the first I've heard of that.'

‘I've only just remembered it. He said he had something for me and I took it to be another tenner. When the last waltz was on I was to go up to this gallery—it used to be an organ loft, I believe—and wait for him there.'

‘Did you go?'

‘ 'Course I didn't. I'd seen him go off in his car, and anyway I was waltzing with a girl I knew. Good thing for me I didn't. I'd have had no witness to say I didn't pull the gun. Now you answer me those things I've asked about Poley Grant.'

‘There must be possible explanations to each of them. We shall have to try to find them. The most important thing, Drummer, is for you to remember anything, any little thing, just a word he let slip perhaps, which might help us to find Grant himself.'

‘Do you think I haven't been racking my poor bloody brains to do that? The police asked me just the same, but there isn't a thing. I don't think he came from London.'

Carolus seized on this.

‘Why not?'

‘Don't know. Just didn't get the impression he came down from London.'

‘But there must have been something to give you that impression. Try to think.'