Give a Corpse a Bad Name (3 page)

‘Afternoon, Leat. What can I do for you?'

Stuart Maxwell was a man of about fifty. He was tall. His hair, that had once been black, was now of that greyness that has an almost bluish-silver sheen. The arched eyebrows were still black; like the straight features and the fine wrinkles in his skin, they were clearly defined. It was one of those faces that look as if they have been drawn by a hard pencil.

Leaning on the gate, he took out his pipe and began to fill it. He was wearing gum-boots, over the tops of which bulged flannel trousers. Both the flannels and the loose jacket, made of what had been one of the more cheerful sorts of check, had their pattern of muddy paw-marks.

‘I suppose you've heard about the accident last night, sir?' said Cecil Leat.

The major shook his head.

‘Accident between two bridges up over,' said Leat.

‘No,' said the major. ‘Somebody killed?'

‘Yes, sir—run over by Mrs Milne.'

‘Good heavens.' But the words were without any noticeable emotion. ‘When?' He cupped his hands round his pipe and lit it.

‘Shortly after dropping you at the crossroads, sir. The man's unknown.'

‘And what do you want me to do about it?'

Cecil Leat took a faintly wondering look at Major Maxwell before he replied. For there was gossip in Chovey about Major Maxwell and Mrs Milne; yet the major could hardly have taken less interest in her accident, even if, as was incredible, the gossip had had nothing in it.

‘I called to inquire,' said Leat, ‘if maybe you didn't happen to see someone comin' along the road just after you'd been put down—see them well enough to give us a bit of a description. 'Tis the difficulty of identifying the body, sir.'

One of Stuart Maxwell's hands went down to scratch the ear of his Aberdeen. ‘No,' he said, ‘I don't think I did.'

‘No one on the road from Purbrook?'

‘No-o.' His voice was deep and rather indistinct; it had a drawling, lazy sound. ‘As a matter of fact, if there had been anyone I should certainly have seen him. I remember I glanced up that way—I remember it distinctly now—and saw a car's headlights a good way off. If anyone had been coming down the road I should have seen him against them.'

‘What kind of car?' asked Leat.

‘Oh, I didn't see. It branched off towards Plymouth. No, I'm sorry I can't say anything to help you.'

‘I suppose, sir, at the time of the accident itself you were already at home? I suppose you didn't hear anything?'

A quick grin appeared for a moment on Stuart Maxwell's face, but there was a rasp in his drawl as he said: ‘Really, Leat, d'you imagine I'd have left Mrs Milne to handle a gruesome business like that by herself if I'd had the faintest idea of what was happening? No, Mrs Milne dropped me at the crossroads, went down the other way to drop Miss Willis, and can't have passed the spot again for at least ten minutes—time for me to have got home, got the house locked up and got myself a drink. It's barely five minutes' walk across the fields to the Purbrook road from here, you know.'

‘That's just it, sir. 'Tis odd, to my way of thinkin', that the lady never called you, seein' you live so close by.'

The grin appeared again, staying longer this time. The major remarked quietly: ‘D'you know, that sounds as if you don't believe me. What's on your mind, Leat? What's worrying you? Have you any reason for thinking I might be expected not to tell the truth?'

A stolid shake of the head was the constable's reply. ‘All the same—'

‘It's not in the least odd,' Stuart Maxwell went on, ‘if you're at all well acquainted with Mrs Milne.'

‘No, sir. All the same …' But in the end Leat did not produce his comment. He thanked the major for having answered his questions, flung a leg over his saddle and pedalled away.

The major stood staring after him for a long moment.

When Cecil Leat reached the police station the sergeant greeted him: ‘Well, Cecil, my lad, here's another trip for you and your bike. Get along out to the scene of yesterday's accident—'

‘God, Sergeant, that's just where I been!'

‘That's right, Cecil, you—'

‘Not five minutes' walk away!'

‘Ah, but you couldn't've done then what you belong to do now. I didn't know meself till now what 'twas you belonged to be doin'. For I've just this moment had an idea. Get along out where we was last night, and have a good look round for a bottle.'

‘What of?'

‘A bottle, or a flask it might be, which your nose tells you used to contain whisky. 'Tis this way. Us been telephonin' all the pubs here and in to Purbrook, and in to Wallaford too, but us can't get no line on the bloke. Then along comes doctor and tells us this: the bloke's stomach is fair swimmin' in whisky. Straight whisky—it ain't been absorbed at all. And that means, says doctor, 'e must've gulped it down only a moment afore 'e was killed. And that means, says I, 'e must've had somethin' to gulp it down out of. So you're booked for that bottle, my lad. You get along out and find it.'

Cecil Leat looked sourly at the self-congratulation on the sergeant's face. ‘Scotland Yard!' He laughed cheerlessly.

Although the road on which the accident had happened was the shortest route from Chovey to Purbrook, there was seldom much traffic upon it. Winding and narrow, it turned driving into a constant caution, a tiresome concentration. Another road, the main road to Wallaford, that unrolled like a piece of stair-carpet over the undulations of the countryside, was, in spite of its indirectness, the more popular. So the sight of a police constable squelching about in the swampy meadows at the side of the road and picking up pieces of broken glass and smelling them, collected no audience, during the first half-hour or so, except one man with a bicycle, one woman with a perambulator, two boys, and a baker's van. Soon even those dispersed.

Leat had first searched the sides of the road itself. But the hedges and ditches had yielded only a few rusty tins and decayed ice-cream cartons. Climbing down then at the end of one of the bridges, he had continued his search in the sucking, oozing grass of the meadows and along the sides of the streams. Using a piece of stick to stir up the mud and pebbles, he searched the streams themselves. It was a lugubrious but thorough examination.

The constable's waterproof cape, spread on the grass, received all his finds. It was at the moment when, having picked up almost under one of the bridges a beer bottle of more obvious newness than any of the others, he was starting to carry this towards his dump, that he heard a voice above his head inquire: ‘What d'you think he's doing, George?'

‘Layin' the cloth for a picnic.'

Cecil Leat looked up and saw two faces looking down at him over the edge of the brick parapet.

He saw two pairs of elbows. Above the elbows two pairs of hands supported, in the one case a long, narrow chin with a cleft in it, in the other a broad, chubby chin with a dimple. The long chin went with a hooked nose, a swarthy skin and a lock of dark hair falling almost into one of a pair of slightly slanting, dark eyes. The chubby chin formed part of a pink and plastic-looking mass, approximately circular, that looked as if features had been shaped in it by the gentle pressing here and there of tentative fingers. The dark face was ferocious, dramatic; its owner wore a shirt of a dull crimson, no tie, no hat and a new waterproof of pale parchment colour. The pink face nestled between a greasy blue cap and the high neck of a sailor's jersey.

Curious, they watched Leat. It was the pink faced man who first joined in the search. Pushing his way between the hedge and the parapet, he slithered down the bank into the meadow and began looking for glass. Presently the other followed. Silently, looking round at Leat from time to time for reference, they copied his actions, bringing any fragments they found to add to the pile on the waterproof cape. They tried smelling the pieces as well, and this, after a while made the dark man say to the policeman in passing: ‘If you'd tell us what trail it is you're trying to pick up it'd be a good deal easier.'

Leat looked at him. ‘Seen you before somewhere haven't I?'

‘Not impossible,' said the dark man.

‘I know as 'tisn't,' said Leat. ‘I know I seen you.'

The fair man gave a quick tug at the other's sleeve. ‘Here,' he began anxiously. But the dark man grinned. Standing face to face with him, it could be seen that he was as tall as the constsable. His age might have been thirty-three.

‘I can't recall where,' said Cecil Leat, ‘but I know I seen you.'

‘Here—'

‘Shut up, George. Overcome your fear of the law.' He grinned again. ‘Won't you tell us what smell it is that you're trying to smell?'

Leat admitted it: ‘Whisky.'

George gave a little giggle. Shrugging away from the restraining hand, he wandered off to look for more pieces of broken bottle. Leat went on: ‘A bloke was done in on the road here last night—run over. Don't know who he was and got to find out. Doctor says as his stomach was a-swim in whisky, so—'

‘Oh, I see,' said the other rapidly. ‘Logical, conscientious—there must be a bottle. And a bottle can't lie—if it tells you anything, which isn't at all certain. Still, even if it doesn't, there must be a bottle.'

Leat nodded slowly. ‘Only,' he said, ‘there ain't.'

One eyebrow on the dark face raised itself suddenly as if it had been hooked up by a question-mark. Leat shrugged his shoulders and turned once more to his search.

But no bottle was found. No bottle, that is to say, that was new enough and fragrant enough. Not a sniff of whisky did Cecil Leat or either of the strangers enjoy until nearly ten o'clock that evening, and that was not on the Purbrook road, but in the bar of the Ring of Bells in Chovey. Even then Cecil Leat was out of it.

It was Major Maxwell who ordered the whisky. Only beer had been drunk by the couple of farmers, the sexton, the auctioneer, the postman and the others who had gathered in the bar. But when Major Maxwell came in, accompanied by Mrs Milne and a young man called Adrian Laws, who was some sort of cousin of the Maxwells, it was Scotch that the major demanded for the three of them. Tensely, explosively, with a thump of his lean fist on the bar, he demanded Scotch.

Adrian Laws leant over the bar and murmured to George Warren, who stood behind it, that they had been dining at the Place. ‘Cauliflower au gratin, figs, custard, and a double orange juice apiece,' he added. He was a tall young man with slightly stooping shoulders; his smooth, oval face and spectacles gave him a faint resemblance to a Chinese student at the London School of Economics, only his hair was reddish, a curling, shining, untidily worn crown of copper. Behind the horn-rimmed glasses the eyes were greenish.

‘Ah, reckon you can do with a drink after an evenin' up to the Place,' said Tom Warren with a wink. His bar was a low-ceilinged room, papered in a warm and drowsy red, with a fire of logs ablaze on the wide hearth, and with warmly, stickily gleaming varnish on the furniture. On the floor red linoleum, patterned in an imitation of tiles, hid the tiles that were actually below it. King Edward and Queen Alexandra gazed fadedly from above the fireplace. ‘Reckon it makes you feel cold in your innards, the Place these days,' said Tom, and looking round him, added: ‘I'm all for good food and drink and cheerful surroundings.'

Softly Major Maxwell remarked to Mrs Milne: ‘Adrian's told the village so much about the austerities and earnest moralities of my good brother that I believe they're as much discussed and quite as scandalously enjoyed as the debts and lecheries of the family he bought the place from. I'll bet there's not a man in this room who doesn't know that my sister-in-law chews raw oatmeal for breakfast.'

She nodded, giving a smile that made little pretence of amusement; in some way, indeed, it only made her face more tired. She had hitched herself on to one of the high stools by the bar, leaning an elbow on the counter's shiny top. The long skirt of her dull blue satin dress draped its folds about the stool with what, in that place, was a faintly comic graciousness; her fur coat hung open, showing flowers on her breast.

‘Oh, yes,' she said, drawing her glass towards her with a gesture heavy in its listlessness, ‘Adrian loves a good gossip. He has a nicer name for it, I expect—picking up local colour or something.' Her voice had an edge to it, as of acute but weary irritation.

Stuart Maxwell regarded her for a moment, his eyes speculative. She turned away from him and looked at the room. In profile the hardness of her face was very apparent. Lifting the drink he had demanded with such demonstrative impatience, the major sipped it absent-mindedly, his eyes turning cloudily to King Edward and Queen Alexandra.

‘You know,' Adrian Laws murmured to him, in the soft, confidential voice that was often to be heard in the Ring of Bells, ‘I'm not responsible for the story about the hair-shirt.'

‘Hair-shirt?' said the major.

‘It's got around that the only underclothing Joe wears is a hair-shirt. I was just explaining, I'm not responsible for it.'

‘Who is?' said the major.

Adrian gave a meaning look at Mrs Milne's profile, then looked back at the major, his lips twitching.

‘Anna?' said the major. ‘Don't believe it.'

‘Of course not,' said Adrian, ‘but what about the young of the species—Daphne. The story has a certain immaturity, don't you think?'

The major gave an obliging but abstracted smile. Just then he felt a sharp tug at his sleeve.

‘Stuart, look!' said Mrs Milne. Her fingers, when they took hold of anything, seemed naturally to take a decisive hold; his sleeve, as she tugged at it, looked as if it must be her property as much as his. ‘That man,' she said, ‘and the other. Watch them, it's rather beautiful.'