Fen Country (3 page)

“The rest is easily told. Copping had last been seen alive at 6:15, by Isobel when she locked him into the tower room; also he’d been seen not more than five minutes before that by two of the servants—so if there was any question of murder, at least it was certain that Doyle hadn’t done it…

“And fortunately there
was
some question of murder—very much so. True, there were no prints except Copping’s own on the knife. But low down on one of the panels of the room you could see traces of the blood, as if a splashed skirt-hem, say, had brushed against it… That wasn’t done by Doyle or myself; there was no blood on either of us, anywhere. And it wasn’t done by Copping in his death-agony—for the simple reason that between the body and the panel a considerable area of floor was innocent of blood-spots.

“All of which meant Isobel.

“Isobel who had had the key of that virtually impregnable room. Isobel who would inherit the whole of her father’s estate. Isobel in whose wardrobe, hastily hidden away, the police found a stained mackintosh…

“That’s really the lot. I told the CID my story, just as I’ve told it to you. And do you know, at the end of it, they were
still
proposing to arrest Isabel… Sheer superstition.’ Fen got to his feet. “Well, it’s been a delightful evening, but I think I’d better be getting along now…”

The resultant howl nearly deafened him. He shook his head at them mock-mournfully. “No true rationalists? Really none? But unless you happen to be superstitious, it’s simple. Doyle’s wife was preparing to divorce him, you see, thereby depriving him of his chance of a share in all that lovely inheritance. He hated her bitterly for that, and in his father-in-law’s death he saw a chance of revenge. It was he, of course, who planted the stained mackintosh in the interim before the arrival of the police: I know that much because by then I’d realized what he was up to, and quite simply followed and watched him, without his being aware of it…”

“But, Gervase, you haven’t explained anything,” wailed a fair-haired girl plaintively. “What
we
want to know is what made you suspicious of him in the first place.’

Fen laughed. “Oh, come now. You’re none of you superstitious, you’ve assured me of that. And not being superstitious, you ought to be aware that it’s only in melodramas and ghost stories that little tortoiseshell cats react violently to the sight of corpses. In real life I’m afraid it isn’t so. For a cat to get into that alarming state there has to be some much livelier stimulus. A dog was one possibility; but a dog would have made itself heard. So how about another cat? The family were fond of cats, I’d heard, so very likely they owned one. And it wouldn’t have been difficult for Doyle to stuff the wretched creature through one of the little windows… He’d noticed the blood on the panel, you see—which of course had been smeared there by the cat—and worked it out that if the cat were disposed of, that panel could be made the foundation for a murder charge.

“Naturally, he’d have buried the cat later. But while he was telephoning the police, I was out looking for the poor thing, which eventually I found in the bushes, near the foot of the tower, where it had crawled to die. A white Siamese it was: no blood on its paws, but a big splotch, acquired obviously at the very moment of Copping’s death, on its flank.”

“So Copping did it himself,” said the fair-haired girl who had spoken before. “What a sell…” She hesitated, and then suddenly her eyes grew shrewd.
“Or did he?
The fact that this man Doyle tried to incriminate his wife doesn’t necessarily mean that she wasn’t guilty, does it?”

“Clever girl.” Fen smiled at her. “Actually, it wasn’t until twelve weeks later that the servant the police had suborned caught Isobel burning the blood-stained frock she’d worn to kill her father… But better late than never. And it makes a good ending, don’t you think? Nice to know that these old family traditions die so hard.”

It lay embedded in crudely wrought silver, with a surround of big lusterless semiprecious stones; graven on the reverse of the silver was an outline which Fen recognized as the ichthys, pass-sign of primitive Christianity.

“Naturally, one thinks of Androcles,” said the reverend mother. “Or if not of him specially, then of the many other early Christians who faced the lions in the arena.” She paused, then added; ‘This, you know, is the convent’s only relic. Apparently it is also our only clue.’

She stooped to replace it in the sacristy cupboard; and Fen, while he waited, thought of frail old Sister St. Jude, whose only intelligible words since they had found her had been “The tooth of a lion!,” and again—urgently, repeatedly—“The tooth of a lion!”

He thought, too, of the eleven-year-old girl who had been kidnapped and of her father, who had obstinately refused to divulge to the police the medium through which the ransom was to be paid, for fear that in trying to catch the kidnapper they would blunder and bring about the death of his only child. He would rather pay, he had said; and from this decision he was in no way to be moved…

It had been the reverend mother who had insisted on consulting Fen; but following her now, as she led the way back to her office, he doubted if there was much he could do. The available facts were altogether too arid and too few. Thus: Francis Merrill was middle-aged, a widower and a wealthy businessman. Two weeks ago, immediately after Christmas, he had gone off to the Continent, leaving his daughter Mary, at her own special request, to the care of the sisters. During the mornings Mary had helped the sisters with their chores. But in the afternoons, with the reverend mother’s encouragement, she would usually go out and ramble round the countryside.

On most of these outings Mary Merrill was accompanied, for a short distance, by Sister St. Jude. Sister St. Jude was ailing; the doctors, however, had decreed that she must get plenty of fresh air, so even through the recent long weeks of frost and ice she had continued to issue forth, well wrapped up, and spend an hour or two each afternoon on a sheltered seat near the summit of the small hill at the convent’s back. It had been Mary Merrill’s habit to see her settled there and then to wander off on her own.

Until, this last Tuesday, a search-party of the sisters had come upon Sister St. Jude sprawled near her accustomed seat with concussion of the brain.

Mary Merrill had not come home that night. The reverend mother had, of course, immediately notified the police; and Francis Merrill, hastening back from Italy, had found a ransom note awaiting him.

To all intents and purposes, that was all; the police, it seemed, had so far achieved precisely nothing. If only—Fen reflected—if
only
one knew more about
the girl herself:
for instance, where she was likely to have gone, and what she was likely to have done, on these rambles of hers. But Francis Merrill had refused even to meet Fen; and the reverend mother had been unable to produce any information about Mary more specific and instructive than the statement that she had been a friendly, trusting,
ordinary
sort of child…

“I suppose,” said Fen, collapsing into a chair, “that it’s quite certain Sister St. Jude has never said anything comprehensible
other
than this phrase about the lion’s tooth?”

“Absolutely certain, I am afraid,” the reverend mother replied. “Apart from a few—a few sounds which may conceivably have been French words, she has not yet been able—”

“
French
words?”

“Yes. I should have mentioned, perhaps, that Sister St. Jude is a Frenchwoman.”

‘I see,” said Fen slowly. “I see… tell me, did she—does she, I mean—speak English at all fluently?”

“Not very fluently, no. She has only been over here a matter of nine months or so. Her vocabulary, for instance, is still rather limited…” The reverend mother hesitated. “Perhaps you are thinking that the phrase about the lion’s tooth may have been misheard. But she has used it many times, in the presence of many of us—including Sister Bartholomew, who is another Frenchwoman—and we have none of us ever had the least doubt about what the words were.”

“Not misheard,” said Fen pensively. “But misinterpreted, perhaps…” Looking up, the reverend mother saw that he was on his feet again. “Reverend Mother, I have an idea,’ he went on. “Or an inkling, rather. At present I don’t at all see how it
applies.
But nonetheless, I think that if you’ll excuse me, I’ll go now and take a look at the place where Sister St. Jude was attacked. There’s a certain object to be looked for there, which the police may well have found, but decided to ignore.”

“What kind of object?” the reverend mother asked.

And Fen smiled at her. “Yellow,” he said. “Something yellow.”

No prolonged search was needed; there the thing lay, in full view of everyone, as plain as the nose on a policeman’s face. In a mood of complacency which the reverend mother could hardly have approved, Fen pocketed it, climbed the remaining distance to the top of the little hill, and looked around him. The complacency waned somewhat; from this vantage-point he could see buildings galore. Still, with any luck at all…

The gods were with him that day; within three hours—three hours of peering over hedges, and of surreptitious trespassing in other people’s gardens—he located the particular house he sought. A glance at the local directory, a rapid but rewarding contact with the child population of a neighboring village, and by six o’clock he was ready for action.

The man who answered the knock on the front door was gray-haired, weedy, nervous-seeming; while not unprepossessing, he yet had something of a hungry look. “Mr. Jones?” said Fen, pushing him back into his own hall before he had time to realize what was happening, and without waiting for a reply, added: “I’ve come for the child.”

“The child?” Mr. Jones looked blank. “There’s no child here. I’m afraid you’ve got the wrong house.”

“Indeed I haven’t,” said Fen confidently. And even as he spoke, the thin, high scream of a young girl welled up from somewhere on the premises, followed by incoherent, sobbing appeals for help. Fen noted the particular door to which pallid Mr. Jones’s eyes immediately turned: an interesting door, in that it lay well away from the direction whence the scream had come…

“Yes, we’ll go through there, I think,” said Fen pleasantly; and now there was an automatic pistol in his hand. “It leads to the cellar, I expect. And since I’m not at all fond of men who try to smash in the skulls of helpless old nuns, you may rely on my shooting you without the slightest hesitation or compunction if you make a single false move.”

Later, when Mr. Jones had been taken away by the police, and Mary Merrill, hysterical but otherwise not much harmed, restored to her father, Fen went round to the back garden, where he found an engaging female urchin wandering about eating a large bar of chocolate cream.

“That was jolly good,” he told her, handing over the promised ten-shilling note. “When you grow up, you ought to go on the stage.”

She grinned at him. “Some scream, mister, eh?” she said.

“Some scream,” Fen agreed.

And: “It’s obvious,” he said to the reverend mother over lunch next day, “that Mary Merrill made friends with Jones soon after she came here, and got into the way of visiting him pretty well every afternoon. No harm in that. But then he found out who her father was and began envisaging the possibility of making some easy money.

“What actually happened, I understand, is that Mary, on that last visit, took fright at something odd and constrained in his attitude to her, and succeeded in slipping away while his back was turned. Whereupon he very stupidly followed her (in his car, except for the last bit) and tried to grab her when she was already quite close to home.

“She eluded him again, and ran to Sister St. Jude for protection. But by that time Jones had gone too far for retreat to be practicable or safe; so he ran after her, struck Sister St. Jude down with his stick, and this time really did succeed in capturing Mary, knocking her out, and so getting her back to his house.

“Whether the dandelion part of it belongs to that particular afternoon, or to some previous one, one doesn’t know, but whichever it was, Sister St. Jude clearly
noticed
the flower and equally clearly realized, even in her illness and delirium, that it provided a clue to—”

“Wait, please,” the reverend mother implored him faintly. ‘Did I hear you say ‘dandelion’?”

And Fen nodded. “Yes, dandelion. English corruption of the French
dent-de-lion
—which of course means a lion’s tooth. But Sister St. Jude’s vocabulary was limited:
she
didn’t know the English name for it. Therefore, she translated it literally, forgetting altogether the existence of that confusing, but irrelevant, relic of yours—

“Well, I ask you: a dandelion, in January, after weeks of hard frost! But Mary Merrill had managed to find one; had picked it and then perhaps pushed it into a buttonhole of her frock. As every gardener knows, dandelions are prolific and hardy brutes; but in view of the recent weather, this particular dandelion could really
only
have come from a weed in a hot-house within an hour’s walk from here. As soon as I saw Jones’s, I was certain it was the right one.”

The reverend mother looked at him. “You were, were you?” she said.

“Well, no, actually I wasn’t certain at all,” Fen admitted. “But I thought that the luck I’d had up to then would probably hold, and I was tired of tramping about, and anyway I haven’t the slightest objection to terrorizing innocent householders so long as it’s in a good cause… may I smoke?”

Gina Mitchell, sitting very upright on the edge of her chair, accepted a cigarette, lit it, looked her tutor defiantly in the eye, and announced without preliminary: “I am
not
a thief. All the evidence is against me, I’ll admit that, but nonetheless it
wasn’t
me, really it wasn’t me, and what I want is for you to—”

“Steady,” said Fen. “Take it easy, and don’t try to bully me, please.” But then he smiled; for he liked the girl, and clearly her distress was genuine. “Start at the beginning,” he suggested.