Jack on the Gallows Tree (3 page)

There had, as a matter of fact, been very little attempt to conceal it. A disused quarry on the Lilbourne road, open to the highway, was scarcely a place to leave a corpse if it was hoped that no one would find it. Chance had brought it to light earlier than might be expected, but it could not in any case have remained long undiscovered. A roadmender working nearby was in the habit of leaving his tools concealed in the quarry overnight to avoid carrying them with him every day, and he had almost stumbled over the corpse of Sophia Carew.

Only two things were known generally about the condition of the corpse, but one of them added a macabre touch to the affair. Medical evidence was that Miss Carew had been strangled. She lay on her back, fully clothed and apparently laid out as though for burial. In her hands was clasped the stem of a somewhat crushed Madonna lily whose waxy white flowers lay on her breast.

Her car was found soon afterwards in the car-park of the Granodeon Cinema. No attendant remained there till the
end of the last performance at half past ten, but the entrance to the car-park was locked by the cinema staff before they left the building, and since the padlock of the gate had not been interfered with it was presumed that the car could not have been put there later than that time.

In the car was her Kerry Blue terrier. He had apparently slept peacefully through the night, and there was nothing remarkable about this. Miss Carew frequently left him in the car while she was in the pictures, and while her car was in that place the poor creature had been quietly expecting her return.

So much for the first murder. The second differed from it in almost every circumstance except two, which were alarmingly similar.

Mrs Westmacott was not, like Miss Carew, a moderately well-to-do person; she was an extremely rich widow and made no bones about it. Her husband had died ten years previously; he was a son of Sefton Westmacott, a famous patron of the arts who had been a friend of the Rossettis and William Morris. Swinburne dedicated a poem to him and he figured in one of the paintings of Burne-Jones.

Sefton Westmacott junior, the husband of the murdered woman, had inherited his father's wealth, but had been a collector rather than an art-patron. Little was known of his wife's background, but she was rumoured to have been an artist's model. She was a stout and florid woman, considered in the town to be purse-proud but charitable, a staunch member of the congregation of St Augustine's, the ‘high' church of Buddington. Indeed, although disliking to move about much she attended frequently at the church in a bathchair; otherwise she rarely left her home.

There were two sons and a daughter. Dante, the eldest of these, was married and owned a model farm five miles away, Gabriel, the younger son, lived with his mother, while Christina, the only daughter, had married a doctor in Middlesbrough and had not been in the town for a year.

Gabriel was the member of the family most determined to keep up the Pre-Raphaelite tradition. He had contributed several articles to magazines and gave lectures to provincial societies. He had confided in his mother that he had to deliver one of his lectures on The Pre-Raphaelites to a lecture society in Lancashire on what turned out to be the fatal Thursday night, and so would be absent from his home. A note had appeared in the local paper to this effect, though the name of the town in which he was to lecture had not been given. On the Wednesday afternoon he had caught a train to London.

Mrs Westmacott was therefore presumed to have been alone in the house on the fatal night. Her staff consisted of two women who came in daily and a married couple, who had been in her service for many years and lived in what had been the stables but were now converted into a comfortable dwelling for them.

There had been no forcible entry to Rossetti Lodge, so either her murderer had a key of the house or Mrs Westmacott herself had admitted him.

She had been found, also fully dressed, on a settee in her own sitting-room, also lying at full length on her back and holding a Madonna lily. She had been strangled and it was believed that she had died before midnight.

“What do you make of it?” asked the young waiter, whose name was Napper, when he realized that Carolus's interest had been caught.

“I don't want to make anything of it,” said Carolus. “And if you'd ever had jaundice you'd know why.”

Napper was inextinguishable.

“No, but it's rather fascinating, isn't it? The old girls had never met so far as anyone knows and there doesn't seem to be any connection between the families. So who could possibly have had a motive for killing both? Either, yes, but not both.”

Carolus absently considered these last words. What
would the Fowlers say to them? Yet they were perfectly explicit.

“Whoever's due to come into Miss Carew's money could have done her, couldn't they? And the same with Mrs Westmacott's. But unless by some freak of chance there's a least common multiple—or would you say highest common factor?—I can't see who could have a motive. Yet those lilies suggest it was the same person.”

“Unless …”

Napper put down the tray on to which he had collected the breakfast things and turned to Carolus.

“Unless what?” he asked.

“You spoke of a freak of chance. Suppose the murderer of Mrs Westmacott had seen the corpse of Miss Carew; couldn't he have adopted the same device to make it appear that both had been done by the same person?”

Napper grinned.

“Or if the murderer of Miss Carew knew how the corpse of Mrs Westmacott was to appear, couldn't he have done the same thing?”

“Or if two murderers had acted in concert, couldn't they have agreed to leave lilies to indicate that there was only one? Each would have an alibi to one murder, wouldn't he?”

“Or could it be a maniac, do you think, suddenly breaking out in Buddington? It would be the very place for him if he wants to specialize in strangling elderly women.”

“Or why not suppose Miss Carew's murder was a try-out for the murder of Mrs Westmacott?”

“Or Mrs Westmacott's an encore for Miss Carew's?”

“You go too far,” said Carolus.

“But you'll own it's intriguing, won't you? If it was one person he or she must have had a busy night. Miss Carew left her home before eight and Mrs Westmacott was dead before twelve. I suppose it's just possible, but it would have been rather a rush.”

Carolus leaned back on the pillows.

“Don't talk to me about a rush,” he said. “I'm resting.”

“Do you want your lunch here?” asked Napper. “Or will you go down for it?”

He spoke as though they were old friends, yet his manner was not by modern standards impudent. He seemed a very self-confident and mature young man.

“I'll go down today, I think. I can't really pretend to be ill any more.”

“Want to see the burial-chamber? We've a smashing collection of mummies.”

He was about to open the door when Carolus asked: “Did you know either of the two murdered women, Napper?”

“Yes. Both,” said the waiter. “They had both been here at different times. Mrs Westmacott only once.”

“Recently?”

“Not for some weeks. Interested?”

“Not really,” said Carolus.

He was not, he assured himself when he was alone.

It was a fine sunny morning and his room had a balcony facing south. He dressed and went out to it. The red-roofed town below him, the hills rolling away to the skyline, the springtime richness of the earth and the brilliant sky mottled with white clouds was reassuring. The scene had a fruitful look, as though England could live on her harvests. He had several weeks to pass idly and a number of books he had long wanted to read. Why should he be interested in the brutal murder of two elderly ladies? Why start again the old routine of enquiry, observation, deduction, analysis till a conclusion was reached and some wretched being was arrested, charged, tried and hanged?

Yet there were those disturbing questions. Two murderers or one? Conspiracy or independent action? It was impossible, having read the case, to avoid asking those.

There was a tap at the door and a pageboy brought in a
telegram which Carolus unwillingly opened and read:
Gorringer seething stop. What a bit of luck stop. Break-Up Tuesday shall I bring Bentley across or have you already solved. Stop. Free for holiday wire instructions. Priggley.

“Any answer, sir?” asked the page.

“Yes. Wait a minute.”

Carolus hurriedly scribbled:
Spend holiday with Hollingbournes stop. Nothing of interest here. Deene.

He handed this to the boy but as he did so he was smiling.

W
HEN
Carolus came into the lounge of the hotel later that morning he gazed with some wonder on his fellow guests. He had no idea that survivals of this kind existed in such numbers. Old ladies with shawls and companions, old gentlemen with starched linen and monocles, they sat in deep armchairs from which nothing could rouse them but the time for lunch. Such younger people as there were in the room—and women of fifty looked positively girlish here—were obviously dependent relatives with or without expectations, or persons employed to ease the last years of wealthy old men and women. He himself, in his forties and weak and shaky from illness, felt a boy as he gazed about him.

He sat down, but was approached by a septuagenarian lady who had just entered.

“You'll excuse me,” she said peremptorily, “but that's my seat.”

Carolus rose.

“It has been for twelve years.”

“I'm so sorry.”

“You've evidently just arrived.”

“Yes.”

“They should have told you.”

“Do you think I might venture on that armchair over there?”

“No. That's Lady Tonks's.”

“I see. Perhaps …”

“You might sit there by the pillar, but Miss Stathey will be down in a minute. She'll want you to hear about her arthritis.”

“Then where …”

“Keep clear of that party with the clergyman. Card-sharpers.”

“Really?”

“I don't advise the Harbellows either. They were acquaintances of the late Mrs Westmacott. One doesn't want to be involved in anything like that.”

“Certainly not.”

“In a hotel like this where you may meet
anyone
you can't be too careful. Riff-raff. Nobodies. The hotel should refuse half of them. Tradespeople, in some cases.”

“No!”

“I assure you of it.”

“They look rather … retired sort of people.”

“Retired from what? Of course if you want to associate with every Tom, Dick and Harry and very likely have your pocket picked, I don't want to discourage you. I knew this hotel before it Went Down.”

“Yet you stay here …”

“Only while Sophia Carew was alive. Now that she has got herself murdered I shall leave. She mixed with the most extraordinary people. I told her a thousand times. Now you see the result.”

“Quite. Did you know her well?”

“She was my cousin. Reckless, quite reckless. She would
talk to
anyone.
When you look round this hotel and see all the tag-rag and bobtail that come to such places nowadays you would think she could have been warned. But no. She was quite without discrimination. Look at the people she lived with. Baxeter, indeed.”

“Isn't their name Baxeter?”

“I daresay their
name
is Baxeter, so far as it goes,” said the old lady sharply. “But what does that signify?”

“I understand he's a retired Colonel?”

“Risen from the ranks, unless the army has gone down more than I thought. Oh, I believe perfectly worthy people in their own milieu. But fancy living with persons of that kind!”

The old lady was tall and thin and had a long sharp nose. The corners of her lips were pulled down to give her a hostile disapproving expression.

“Did you know Sophia Carew?” she asked Carolus, as though she had become suddenly aware of him standing beside her.

“No. I have just arrived in Buddington for a rest cure. My name is Deene. Spelt D-e-e-n-e.”

“Is it? Spelt D-e-e-n-e. You may sit down. My name is Tissot.”

But before Carolus could accept the invitation a pageboy came and told him that a gentleman was waiting to see him.

Miss Tissot heard this with a stony expression and when the boy added—“I believe he's a police inspector,” the old lady set her lips and stared resolutely into the distance, scarcely acknowledging Carolus's leave-taking with a slight, an almost imperceptible, inclination of the head.

In the hall Carolus found his old friend Detective Inspector John Moore.

“I heard you'd arrived,” said Moore. “Came round at once.”

“But what are you doing here, John?”

“Been transferred. Just in time for this lot. Bright, isn't it?”

“Where can we get a drink? Do you think there's a bar in this place or will it only serve medicinal water?”

They found something called an American bar in which they were the only customers.

“Tell us all about it,” said Carolus when they were sitting in a far corner.

“What? Oh, that,” said Moore and was silent.

“Haven't they given you the case?”

“I've got the case all right.”

“Teaser, is it?”

“In a way. Yet in a way open-and-shut. Look, Carolus. If I had to find the murderer of Sophia Carew I could do it. The nephew's as obvious a suspect as you could wish. Strongest possible motive, no alibi and a mass of other circumstantial stuff. If I was investigating the death of Mrs Westmacott I shouldn't have a doubt. The younger son …”

“But he was away in Lancashire, lecturing.”

“Nothing of the sort. That was a blind. Told his mother that, he says, to get away from Buddington for a couple of nights. He again has a motive and no alibi. But how can I suspect Charlie Carew of killing Mrs Westmacott, or Gabriel Westmacott of killing Miss Carew?”