Death at Hallows End (21 page)

“How did you know that, Mr. Neast?”

Holroyd's smile seemed broader and more mirthless than ever.

“He told us. In fact he asked if we could recommend a good solicitor for the purpose. Our own man is Drury of Lycett Dobbs in Cashford, but I knew of Stuffart as a very sound chap. So Darkin rang him up straightaway and made an appointment for this morning. There was a large sum of money involved.”

“Wasn't it very unusual for Darkin to go out with a gun?”

“Not at all. He liked having a pot at the rabbits in that meadow where his body was found. He had borrowed my gun and been there several times before.”

“Did he have any luck?”

“Luck?”

“With rabbits, I mean?”

“Yes. He brought home a brace only last Sunday.”

“He always went in the early morning?”

“Yes. It's the best time. He always went at the same time, too, until today when he went earlier. Always left the house at a quarter to eight. My brother and I used to pull his leg about it and ask whom he was meeting in the Long Meadow.”

“Did he sleep well, Mr. Neast?”

“Sleep well? I couldn't say, really. He did say once that he always took a mild sedative at night. But plenty of people do that. He got up early, if that's any test.”

“What were his plans?”

“I don't think he had made any. Until he knew about the money I think he intended to find a similar job. But he was very shaken by my uncle's death and we made him welcome so far as we could until he had decided. Naturally when he heard he would be a rich man, it changed everything.”

“Naturally. Thank you for your information, Mr. Neast. You must be tired of being the centre of such a storm.”

“We should like to see it cleared up, of course. But I have learned to take life as it comes.”

That evening Snow and Carolus met again at the Falstaff

“I've just got the results of the post mortem through,” said Snow. “They did a rush job for us because the circumstances justified it. You were quite right. They found enough poison in the man to kill two people.”

“What poison?”

“Quite an ordinary thing called Thelodocticylin. It is used in small quantities in the making of certain tranquillising pills.”

“So Darkin was dead before the shot was fired into his mouth?”

“Not necessarily. An almost empty bottle of Somnifax tablets, the tranquillisers made from Thelodocticylin, was found in his pocket. The quantity found in Darkin would not have had an instantaneous effect. Like many suicides he could have had fears about the effectiveness of poison. He may have been murdered, as you suggest, but on the other hand there is nothing final to prove that he did not take poison, then shoot himself for double security.”

“I see. This thing's getting out of hand, isn't it?”

“Let me say frankly, Mr. Deene, that although I would be reprimanded severely for saying such a thing to a private investigator, I tell you that any help you can give me at this point would make me really grateful.”

“There is just one thing I can try,” said Carolus. “It's a long shot and may come to nothing. But it's all I can suggest.”

“What is it?”

“I'm going tomorrow to Haysdown.”

Snow stared at him as though he were insane.

“Where and what is Haysdown?” he asked loudly.

“It's a village about eighteen miles from here. Hickmansworth was brought up there. I should like to know a little more about Hickmansworth.”

Snow seemed about to explode, but said no more. He evidently thought that Carolus was being facetious.

I
T WAS A CLEAR WINDY
morning when Carolus set out for Haysdown, and, he scarcely had time to reflect, the last day of the school holidays. This journey, as he had told Snow, was a long shot, longer than he would admit to himself, yet if it yielded what he obstinately tried to hope it would, the case would be wide open and tidily finished before he began teaching.

He found the village, though in the same fold of the hills as Hallows End, to be entirely different from it in appearance. Where Hallows End was huddled among trees, damp-looking and in most of its buildings ancient, Haysdown was spread out over a hillside with more bright new bungalows and building estates than old cottages or houses.

The inn, however, was old and he made straight for it, reflecting that throughout his career as an investigator he had gained more information over bars than in all the private houses he had entered. He was no sentimentalist about pubs and disliked the artily restored and picturesque ones, but where else, in any village or suburb, could a man start his enquiries, whether he was looking for a house to let, a char to employ, or a murderer to convict? The Duke of Clarence, with its square Victorian front and geranium-filled window boxes, promised to be no exception.

It had been open only about ten minutes when Carolus entered the bar. This was one of those large rooms, used almost universally, that are sometimes found in the smarter country pubs. Carolus guessed there was a small saloon full of polished brass used by a few couples on Saturday night, but that the business of the house was carried on here. His only fellow customer was a very old man who, with the shyness of one from another epoch, would not look up at him or answer his “Good morning.”

The landlord, a stoutish man in his fifties, was busy polishing glasses. Carolus ordered his usual Scotch and soda and respectfully observed the general silence for a few minutes.

Presently he felt he might venture on a crab-like approach to subjects he wanted to introduce.

“Windy this morning,” he said.

The landlord, who kept a pipe in his mouth, held a glass up to the light.

“It
is
windy,” he agreed.

“I suppose you get it pretty strong here. You're open to it.”

“Yes, we
do
get it strong,” the landlord cheerfully concurred, and added, “especially when it's round the North East.”

“Been here long?” dared Carolus.

“Born here,” said the landlord. “Father had the pub before me, and his before that. This is one of the few houses in England that's been in one family for three generations.”

“Interesting,” said Carolus, and recognising at least a temporary check, was silent again.

When he returned to the attack, he came in from a different quarter.

“I've just come from Hallows End,” he observed. “It's in a bit of a turmoil, as you can imagine.”

“I'm not at all surprised,” said the landlord. “They must be wondering who it'll be next.”

Carolus had to retreat.

“That's about it,” he agreed and there was yet another pause.

This time he attacked head on.

“Did you ever know some people called Hickmansworth?” he asked.

“Well, of course I did,” said the landlord rather scornfully. “They had what we call the manor, though it's no bigger than several other large houses. Young Gerry was just about my age.”

Recognising in “young Gerry” the grey-haired Hickmansworth of today, Carolus did no more than nod. With any luck he had set the machine of memory working and wouldn't have to ask another question.

“He was a lad,” said the landlord reflectively.

“I can well believe it.”

“Up to anything, you might say.”

“Yes.”

“Full of devilment. They couldn't do anything with him.”

“I'll have another Scotch, and what will you have?” encouraged Carolus.

“Thank you. I'll have a bitter. Yes, young Gerry was a boy.”

Reminiscence would break out at any minute, Carolus knew.

“All sorts of larks he got up to.”

“Mm?”

“I remember once … but it wouldn't do to tell you about that because the girl's married now and got grown-up children.”

“No. Perhaps not.”

“Another time he caught a couple of big rats and shut them up in the pulpit which was one of those with doors to them. You should have seen what happened when the vicar in those days, a little nervous chap called Meiklejohn, went up to preach his sermon.”

“I can imagine it,” Carolus assured the landlord.

“Then there was the time he had a fight with a lad a little bigger than himself and got him down on the ground and tried
to strangle him. They say he would have done if two men hadn't come along and pulled him off. This other lad couldn't speak for a week and hasn't got over it to this day. Yes, he was a proper little demon, that Gerry Hickmansworth.”

“Sounds like it,” agreed Carolus.

“I never took to his cousins, though. They used to come down and stay with him. Name of Neast. They were just the opposite to what young Gerry was. You'd say butter wouldn't melt in their mouths. They'd give him away, too, or let him take the blame for anything they'd had a hand in.”

“Did they spend much time here?”

“Most of the summer they were here every year. But I never took to them. This Gerry used to lead like a gang of us youngsters, and I was what he called his lieutenant. It was all right till these Neasts came along, then you never knew. I'd found the headquarters for us and I never wanted Gerry to tell them where it was because I knew they'd give it away, but he told them in the end. It was a dead secret, too. You know what boys are.”

“Where was it?”

The landlord smiled.

“It's funny,” he said, “but even now I don't like saying where it is, not after all these years. It was what they call a Dane-hole out in the wood.”

“A Dane-hole? Here?” asked Carolus, the history master in him almost as interested as the detective.

“That's what they used to say. But another man who knew a lot about all that said it was an old mine shaft. I'll tell you what it was like. You couldn't hardly see the entrance because it was all grown over, but when you found it, you went stooping down a long tunnel which sloped downwards, till you came to like a big cave. You could tell it had been dug out by men ever so many years ago. Those that called it a Dane-hole said it was where all the people from the village used to hide when the
Danish invaders were coming, and those who thought it was a mine said that's how the Romans made mines when they had no means of getting people up and down a vertical shaft. Anyhow, that's where our little gang used to hold its meetings. You see, I heard of it from my father, who used to play there as a boy. It was like a secret passed on between the boys of each generation.”

“Very, very interesting,” said Carolus. “I should like to see it.”

“I don't know whether I could find the entrance now after all these years,” said the landlord.

“I expect you could. Somehow one doesn't forget things like that from childhood.”

“You interested in archy … archo …”

“Archaeology? Yes. I am.”

“Tell you what then, we'll go out there this afternoon and see if I can find it for you.”

“Splendid. That's very kind of you.”

“I know how to get there, mind you. You stop at Crabling's cottage on the Scorton road and turn into the woods from there. But how you pace it out I've forgotten. Still, we'll see.”

Carolus saw no movement and heard no sound from the old gentleman in the bar, but there must have been some communication, telepathic perhaps, between him and the landlord. For the landlord at this moment said, “Ready for your other pint then, Mr. Gosforth?” He fetched the glass tankard from the table and filled it.

“What time do you close?” asked Carolus.

“Two o'clock. I'll be ready soon after.”

Carolus ate a cold lunch by the bar fire, then drove at the landlord's instructions by a wood-surrounded road for a distance of half a mile.

“There's the cottage,” said the landlord. “Stop in front of that.”

As he got out of the car, Carolus became aware of a frowning female face at the window of the cottage.

“That's Mrs. Crabling,” said the landlord. “She's a proper old bitch. Gives her husband the hell of a life. He's a nice chap who likes a pint now and again and the look of a pretty girl. But not if she knows it! She's so prim and narrow-minded … well, dirty-minded some would say, that she won't let him out of her sight if she can help it and thinks every girl in the village is no better than she should be and after him. She tried to have the dances stopped in the village hall because she said they led to immorality afterwards. Now what we've got to find is this Dane-hole.”

The landlord led the way through a gap in the hedge into the autumn-scented wood. They rustled deep drifts of brown leaves as they walked and the damp beautiful smell of these, and the lichen-covered trees, and the mossy trunks of elms had a nostalgic air, so that Carolus remembered his own boyhood adventures in such woods as these.

“It's not more than twenty yards from the road if I remember right,” said the landlord, looking about him. “But just how did we used to come? You stay here a minute to mark the direction and I'll see if I can pick up the track.”

Carolus did as he was told and the landlord disappeared, rooting about in the stillness of the woods like some great animal. Minutes began to pass but Carolus waited patiently, knowing that there was nothing he could do. He was rewarded at last by a shout from over on his left.

He found the landlord by a rough cavity.

“Looks as though someone's been here lately,” the landlord said and pointed to the broken undergrowth and branches.

“It does.”

From that moment the fear, or the hope, or the wild suspicion of what he would find in the Dane-hole became certainty. The landlord pulled out an electric torch he had brought along,
and they began their slow stooping way down the long tunnel. It was a painful experience, for it was impossible to stand upright and the shaft or passage continued for nearly twenty yards.