Death at Hallows End (5 page)

“Of course not.”

“Ask Stanley if he remembers that night at Vine Street. Hooliganism, the magistrate called it next morning.”

“I will. Did you know Duncan Humby?”

“Just. He wasn't a patient of mine.”

“All right, Lance. Thanks for the information.”

Carolus dropped into his favourite armchair and remained perfectly motionless for some twenty minutes. Then he fell asleep.

C
AROLUS DECIDED NEXT DAY
to drive down to Beaslake for Grossiter's cremation. He was curious to see who would attend and interested in getting a glimpse of the two nephews Holroyd and Cyril Neast, and perhaps of the man Darkin whom Mrs. Stick had heard described as “smarmy.” He also reflected that he had never yet attended a cremation and felt a certain morbid curiosity about it.

He hurried over his breakfast and as he opened the front door called back to a scowling Mrs. Stick that he would not be in to lunch, He was soon out on the main road driving fast to Beaslake.

The crematorium was an ugly red brick building with vague suggestions of ecclesiasticism about it. The ground near it was taken up with a large car park, and there were many shrubs of the least interesting varieties. Here, if anywhere, Carolus thought, there should be cypresses, the funeral trees that the Romans dedicated to Pluto because once they are cut they never grow again. Yews would take too long to grow, perhaps, for one could not imagine this public library sort of building becoming an ancient monument that would one day inspire some twenty-fifth-century Gray to compose an “Elegy written in a Country Crematorium.”

Leaving his car in the car park, he walked across to the entrance where a cheerful man in black was picking his teeth.

“Morning,” the man said. “You for the Grossiter lot? It's not till eleven, so you've got nearly an hour to wait.”

“I know,” said Carolus. “How long will it take?”

“Well, they've ordered the big show, organ, parson,
the lot,
so it will be half an hour at least. We do a shorter one cheaper, but these Mr. Neasts wanted no expense spared.”

Two men, the first arrivals, entered by a side door.

“Are they attending the cremation?” asked Carolus.

“No. Two of the cooks,” said his bright interlocutor. “They've got a big day on today. We've got half a dozen in all, but two of them's being done together. Yes, an ‘usband and wife. Killed in a motor smash. So that'll take half the time. We shall have to get your lot out pretty smart though because we've got another at twelve and the Reverend Gillow hates being late for his lunch. I've known him cut out a piece of the service if it's getting past half past twelve, though not the part about dust to dust and ashes to ashes because they always notice that. Yes, I will have a cigarette. You'd think I was a non-smoker working here, wouldn't you? But I like a pipe. My wife pulls my leg about it. ‘I don't know how you can', she says, ‘when you've been at that place all day.' You get used to it, though.”

“What happens to the ashes?” asked Carolus.

The man understood that he did not mean those of his pipe.

“They can have them if they want them. We're very strict about that. Some don't bother, though. They reckon that once anyone's gone they're gone and a lot of ashes won't make any difference, any more than what you rake out of the stove in the morning. Others are just the opposite. They buy special pots for them and keep them on the mantelpiece. I shouldn't care for that myself, would you? Not to think your old man or whoever it was in the room all the time sealed up in an urn. But the best
are those that want to scatter 'em somewhere and go to a lot of trouble to do it. That's generally in the will. Sometimes they hire a boat and take 'em out to sea or climb up some hill or other when there's a high wind. Seems a bit silly to me but there you are. If it's left in the will they've got to do it, haven't they?”

“What arrangements have been made for the ashes this morning?”

“They've got to be kept. The nephew was most particular about that. Hullo. This looks like the first of them. I must go and slip my gown on. Oh, yes, I always do that. Looks more serious, doesn't it? It doesn't do to be cheerful round here. Would you like to go inside? You can sit down then.”

“Yes,” said Carolus. “Somewhere at the back if you don't mind.”

“Come on, then. This way. You can sit here where you won't be noticed, if you like. Oh, thank you, sir. You can see all right from here? That's where they put the coffin when they bring it in.”

Carolus looked about him. He was in a church-like building with a chancel in which was a curious structure for the coffin. Beyond it was something in the shape of an altar with a brass cross and two candlesticks. Seeing him looking at this, the man beside him explained.

“They can have the cross or not, just as they like. A lot on the free-thinking side don't care for it, but there's others that do. Same with the parson. You don't
have
to have him. A good many of them like to read out bits of poetry or something of the sort for themselves. It's all according. But Grossiter's lots C of E. They're having hymns and that. The organ's at the back and there's a choir of four—three ladies and a man. Mr. Pye's the organist and I always think he's a bit loud. I'd like a bit more hush about it. Well, I must run along now. The hearse'll be here any minute.”

It was a quarter of an hour, however, before the coffin was carried in, followed by the two brothers Neast, and some way behind them came a tall dark man with huge hands and feet whom Carolus took to be Darkin. All three of them looked unctuously solemn. There was no one else.

As well as he could, Carolus examined the brothers Neast. He had watched their faces only in profile as they passed, .and now could see no more than the backs of their heads. Both had thick dark hair growing far down their necks, both had long narrow heads and rather prominent ears. But otherwise there seemed little resemblance. One, who was tall and narrow-shouldered, was pale and somewhat saturnine. The other, much shorter, looked powerful and heavy and had a red bad-tempered face. They wore, Carolus guessed for the first time, stiff uncomfortable suits of black with starched collars and black ties.

The organ finished playing the Dead March and a form of funeral service was read by a sleek little parson in a surplice. Its climax came when the coffin which, it now appeared, was on an electrically-operated lift, began to disappear slowly into regions below, and the words of the parson took a consolatory and resurrectionary turn. It was all rather unpleasant.

Carolus waited until the brothers and Darkin had left the building, then came out in time to see them getting into a Rolls Royce driven by Darkin—the property of the late Mr. Grossiter, Carolus suspected.

Carolus found his recent friend standing beside him.

“I don't know how you feel,” the man said. “But if you were thinking of a drink, there'd just be time for me to come down with you to Feathers and get back before the next lot. If we was to go in that car of yours.”

Carolus nodded and they walked towards the car park.

“Reverend Gillow brings a thermos when we've got two on in one morning, and Mr. Pye's a teetotaler. But I must say I find a drop helps you through it, though I don't always get a chance.”

They pulled up at the Feathers and found themselves alone in a small bar divided from the saloon by a partition.

“Was you a friend of the departed, sir? Or of those brothers Neast?”

“Neither, really. I wanted to see a cremation.”

The man laughed.

“Well, you've seen one,” he said. “Funny turn-out, isn't it? I shouldn't like it, not for myself I wouldn't. I told the wife, I want to be buried when my time comes. I can't understand people asking to be frizzled up like that. Can you?”

“There may be reasons sometimes,” Carolus said.

“You mean if there's anything funny about the way they've gone? There's always that. I believe if the police could stop it altogether, they would. Look at the evidence that may get destroyed.”

Carolus said nothing and the man began to talk about the ceremony just completed.

“They haven't paid for it yet,” he confided.

“We understand they're going to come into all the old gentleman's money and it's a big lot, but they haven't got much in the meantime. Seems funny with them being farmers, doesn't it? They've got a name for being close, though, so perhaps they don't like paying for it out of their own money, as it were, and are waiting to get his. You never know with people, do you?”

Carolus agreed that you didn't, and at his friend's request ran him quickly back to the crematorium for what he had described as the next lot. Then Carolus drove across country towards Hallows End which lay some forty miles from there.

It was a raw ugly morning with rain threatening and a misty chill lying over the flat uninteresting countryside. The journey was tedious because he was cutting across the direction of the main roads by narrow by-roads, sometimes no more than lanes, and they kept his speed uncomfortably low.

While still some four miles from the village, he had to follow a main road for a few hundred yards, and on it saw a bright new pub called the Falstaff Hotel. Its neo-Elizabethan architecture and expanse of diamond-paned windows did not attract him, but since it was likely to be the only place for lunch in the vicinity, he decided to follow the instruction on a large board: “Drive In.” Another board proclaimed: “Lunch now Being Served in the Tudor Dining Hall,” and yet another: “Accommodation for Motorists.” When, however, he reached the Sir Walter Raleigh Bar, he found that these inviting inscriptions, at least for today, had been unproductive for he was alone with the landlord, a youngish man with a large and turbulent growth of hair on his upper lip.

“Good-o,” said the landlord, “you're the first today. You must have a drink on me. What'll you have?”

Carolus accepted his usual Scotch and soda and prepared to face the other's evident curiosity.

“See you've got a Bentley,” said the landlord. “Envy you. They're fab. Absolutely fab.”

“They're good,” said Carolus.

“Good? They've marve. Wish I could afford one. Nothing better, car-wise.”

Carolus deftly turned his line of thought.

“Do you know the village of Hallows End?” he asked.

“Know it? Born there. Father the rector before the present man. You going there? Press, perhaps?”

“No,” said Carolus.

“But I'm interested in recent events round here.”

“Mean this joker who's disappeared? Incred, isn't it?”

“No. Nothing's incredible. How do local people account for it?”

“They don't. They can't. Unless it's a murder. They've no experience of that sort of thing. Murder-wise we've had nothing in the village this century.”

“Has there been any attempt to connect it with Monk's Farm and Grossiter's death?”

“Shouldn't think so. Why should there be?”

Carolus believed in giving a little information sometimes — a sprat to catch a mackerel.

“The man who disappeared was on his way there,” he said. “He'd been called by Grossiter to make a new will for him.”

“Oh! Was that it? I see what you mean. Well, the Neasts are pretty unpop round here but I don't think anyone connects them with this empty car. They've lived here a long time. Stranger-wise the folks are a bit suspish, but not of one of themselves. See what I mean?”

Only just, thought Carolus, but nodded encouragingly and ordered two more drinks,

“Not sold on mysteries myself but it's oddish now you come to mention it. This Grossiter had only been at the farm a few days and no one would have known he was there if it hadn't been for a character called Darkin who worked for him. He came here every night and told us. I thought him a bit obnox myself, but I listened to him. Scandal-wise we don't hear much in these parts.”

“What did he tell you?”

“A lot, really, up to the old man's death. Then he never said another word. In fact he hasn't been in since. Seems Grossiter was rich and had never made a will. His only son died recently,
so unless he did something about it these Neasts would get the lot. The old man had never seen them till he came over here to find out what he thought of them.”

“And what did he think?”

“Not much, we gathered. Now you tell me about this solicitor it all falls into place. Pretty ug, isn't it?”

“Not necessarily. Humby may turn up. His disappearance may be nothing to do with the Neasts or Grossiter.”

“Extraw, though. Coincidence-wise that would be absolutely incred to me.”

“Do you know the Neasts?”

“By sight, of course. Haven't seen them to speak to since I was a boy. Old man sent me to Repton, then I was at the university for a couple of years.”

“Ox or Camb?” asked Carolus, infected by the landlord's habit of abbreviation.

“London, as a matter of fact. Then I bought this place about three years ago. But the Neasts never come here. In fact they're very little seen about. Invis, you might say. Never enter a pub. Do their own housework. Go to market over at Cashford every Monday. Otherwise keep to themselves.”

“They must employ someone on their farm.”

“They had two men. But that's another death we've had. Old Harold Rudd died a few days before Grossiter. He was buried on the Saturday.”

“Oh, and what did
he
die of?”

“Overwork, I should think. He was in the hospital two miles from here. Swanwick Hospital. He was about seventy. So death-wise we've been pretty biz.”

“I didn't know anything about that. The Neasts have another man?”