Jack on the Gallows Tree (7 page)

“No.”

“You did not for instance attend St Augustine's church?”

“We are Pantheists,” said the Colonel severely. “We do not believe in individual substantial souls but in one universal vital sensitive force permeating the world like an all-pervading breath. The hotch-potch of obscurantism and superstition which would be found in the place you mention would be poisonous to us. Our cathedral is the open air.”

“Very pleasant,” said Carolus absently. “And Miss Carew?”

“Her attitude was a negative one. She certainly attended no church.”

“If she had met Mrs Westmacott you would have known?”

“Undoubtedly. She was most communicative about anyone in the town she knew. When Gabriel came here she told us that she had never seen him before and knew none of his family.”

“Did anything come of his visit and the request he made?”

“Nothing. Only on that last night at dinner she said lightly that she would have to mention it to the man Johnson, to whom she referred as ‘Ben', unaware that such familiarity pained us.”

“One other point, Colonel Baxeter. Miss Carew's will. You know the terms of it?”

“Yes. Her solicitor has communicated with me. It came as a surprise. We were very old friends; in fact it might be said that we were brought up together. My father was a doctor in Colchester when her father held a living in the neighbourhood. It was very gratifying to us both when Sophia came to share our home and I think I may say that she was happy with us. But that she should leave us so large a portion of her estate has astounded us. Naturally, we could wish that it had not come to us through such a tragic event and we are as shocked as anyone at the manner of her death. Nonetheless it would be hypocritical not to admit that the money will be useful.”

“It always is,” said Carolus and was silent.

“Have no hesitation if there is anything else you wish to ask.”

“Nothing factual, Colonel Baxeter. But surely you who knew Miss Carew so well must have some suspicion?”

For the first time the Colonel seemed at a loss. Presently he answered in his usual unruffled manner.

“My wife and I do not allow ourselves to indulge in
suspicion at the expense of other human beings,” he said. “Our creed is of brotherhood.”

“Yes, yes, but somebody deliberately strangled your friend.”

“I cannot allow myself to suppose that it was deliberate, Mr Deene, at least in the sense you use the word. No one sane, no one of healthy mind, could have done such a thing.”

“I see what you mean. Those lilies.”

“We disapprove of cutting flowers. We do not allow the air in our home to be polluted by the fumes that rise from decaying vegetation. It seems to me that the placing of those flowers on the dead body was consistent with the act of murder itself.”

“Really?”

“Yes. Quite consistent. It is the murder which seems to us the work of a mind unhinged. Once that is recognized the details follow. You surely agree that the murders were committed by a homicidal maniac?”

“No, I do not. And I don't think the police accept that idea.”

“You surprise me.”

Carolus rose to go.

“Sophia had no troubles that we knew of, no anxieties. No problems,” volunteered the Colonel.

“That makes it very baffling. Thank you so much for all your information.”

Colonel Baxeter came with him to the door and Carolus hurried out to his car and drove straight to the Royal Hydro. He felt chilled to the bone. The hygienic air of Dehra Dun had, he thought, brought him near to a relapse. He ruthlessly pushed his way to a seat near one of the great log fires in the lounge and after removing a magazine and bag left to reserve it sank into its cosy depths. He then lit a cigarette, drew the smoke into his lungs and ordered a large whisky and soda. He wondered contentedly how many of
the Colonel's rules of health he would break that evening, and began to feel comfortably warm again. At dinner, he thought, he would drink a bottle of Burgundy, eat a Beefsteak Tatar, order coffee and brandy and smoke to its butt the largest and best cigar in the hotel. Blast Baxeter!

N
EXT
day the sun suddenly appeared grinning, as if to say he had only been hiding for fun. Carolus had breakfast in bed, but was down in the lounge before any of the principals had yet appeared and only a small group of companions and dependants was in evidence. Rupert Priggley rose from an armchair and came over to him.

“I know,” he said, “the scene of the crime! That's where you're going this bright morning, isn't it?”

It was, and Carolus admitted it.

“Couldn't be cornier, could it? I suppose if you'd gone out on the day after the murder you'd have been looking for footprints.”

“Quite likely. The police were. And found them. I'm not going to look for anything in particular, but I would like to see the place. It's four miles out on the Lilbourne road.”

They climbed into the Bentley Continental and left the Royal Hydro, grey and grandiose even on that cheerful morning.

“I must say I've never known you take a case so casually,” remarked Rupert. “It must have been days before you began at all and now you don't seem properly steamed up. Yet it's a pretty brutal thing.”

“I don't feel any responsibility, this time,” said Carolus.
“John Moore's in charge and he's perfectly able to do the job. At present I'm almost dabbling.”

The banks between which they ran were yellow with primroses and at one point they could see stretching between the trees the haze of bluebells.

After three miles Carolus began to drive slowly, looking for the quarry on his left. They nearly missed it, for the cart-track leading to it was half-hidden by the bursting bushes.

“This is where the car must have stood—just off the verge, because it left no tyre-marks.”

“Do you suppose it was her car?”

“Probably but there's no certainty of that. No one seems to have seen it. Yet that cottage overlooks the spot.”

“So the body was dragged from here to the quarry?”

“Apparently, yes. Quite a distance, but she wasn't a heavy woman. One thing is quite certain—it was carefully planned. The murderer must have brought his props with him unless … let's go across to that cottage.”

It was a small double-fronted cottage and a brick path led up to its front door. This did not look as though it had been opened for years and the windows to right and left of it, with lace curtains and plants in them, looked hermetically sealed. Carolus knocked, but there was no response. He tried again, and was about to turn away when he saw that a tall angular woman had appeared from the back of the premises and was watching him in sullen silence.

“Yes?” she said.

Her dark hair hung untidily round her face and she wore an apron of sacking. A forbidding-looking woman.

“I'm sorry to trouble you …” began Carolus.

“It's the murder again, is it? I thought I'd done with that. What do you want this time? I've got my washing to do.”

She spoke in a raw aggrieved voice, yet there was something
suggesting that under her surly manner she was not as unfriendly as she seemed.

“I wondered if I might ask you a few questions, Mrs …”

“Goggs. I suppose you can. There's no law against asking questions, is there? You better come in, only you'll have to come the back way. Mind that bucket.”

She led them into one of the front rooms, which was so dark that it took Carolus a few moments to find his way to the chair she indicated. The room smelt of cheese, soap, damp and flower-pots, with a faint faraway odour of ancient meals.

“Yes, I didn't think I'd have any more of it,” said Mrs Goggs, “not after the questions they asked last time. Anyone would think I'd done for the poor woman myself or my husband had. What is it you want to know?”

“First of course, did you hear anything that night?”

“No. Only the dog.”

“The dog?”

“Yes. Don't you know about that? I told all the others. We were sitting in the kitchen at the time …”

“What
time?”

“Don't ask me that. It's years since we've had a clock in the house, though my husband's never been late for his work. He works for Mr Raydell, the farmer at Lilbourne, and he seems to know by instink when it's time to get up in the morning. Winter and summer it's the same. Our old clock went wrong ever so long ago and I've never bothered. So I can't tell you what time it was we heard that dog.”

“But approximately?”

“We were just thinking about going to bed. Somewhere round about nine, I daresay. Only don't take me up on that.”

“Was it very unusual to hear a dog barking?”

“Certainly it was. There isn't a house for half a mile here and this dog was barking as though it was shut up. Went on, it did. I said to my husband, I said, ‘I wonder
whatever that is?' He said it must be someone out in the road with a dog. Well, we get them stopping along this road in cars at night. You wouldn't believe they could be that shameless. I don't know, I'm sure.”

“So you thought it was a dog belonging to someone in a car?”

“Well, what else was there to think? I said to my husband, ‘You better go out and see what's the matter,' I said, but he wasn't having any of that. Why should he, that's what I say. We weren't to know someone was being strangulated not a stone's throw away, were we? Anyway, there it was. After a time the barking stopped.”

“Did you hear a car drive away?”

“Well, we wouldn't, would we? Not with them passing all the time. We never even knew one had stopped, to tell you the truth, though we might have guessed it from this dog barking.”

“When did you first know about the murder?”

“Not till halfway through the next morning. It was Thickett found her and of course he wouldn't say anything to us.”

“Oh. Why not?”

“We weren't speaking. Hadn't been for a long time. Well, I wouldn't demean myself. Not with all I know about him. Must be more than a year since we haven't spoken. So he wouldn't say anything to us. It was the police came and told me first, wanting to know what I knew about it. They'd taken the poor lady away by then, so I never saw the way she was laid out, but from all accounts it was enough to upset anyone, lying there as though she was waiting to be measured up.”

“Thickett's the roadmender, I believe?”

“That's what he calls himself, but by what I can hear he may not be much longer now the Council's got to know about him.”

“Where does he live?”

“Right the other side of Buddington, but if you want to see him he'll be in the Star at Lilbourne at twelve o'clock. He always takes his bit of dinner in there, such as she gives him, though from all accounts she's too busy running down to the Bottle and Jug near where she lives to think about giving him a proper dinner. Anyway, he always takes it into the Star as regularly as clockwork and has it with a pint of mild, that's why my husband won't go there midday. So if you want to see him about anything, there you are.”

“Thank you, Mrs Goggs.”

On the way to the car, Rupert, who had remained silent during this interrogation, grinned broadly.

“I thought at first she was going to make a nice suspect,” he said. “Looked it, didn't she? But she turned out to be just as garrulous as all the rest of them. Pity, really.”

Carolus said nothing. But in a moment he stopped and turned back.

“Mrs Goggs!” he called.

The woman appeared again.

“What is it this time?” she asked. “Anyone would think I've got nothing to do.”

“Do you grow lilies in your garden?”

“Lilies? You mean the big white ones?”

“Yes.”

“What they call Madonna lilies, you mean?”

“That's it.”

“Or some people call them Easter lilies because they come early?”

“Do they? I daresay. Do you grow them?”

“No. I can't say I do,” said Mrs Goggs regretfully. “She'd got some in her hands, hadn't she? So they told me. No. My husband won't have anything like that. He says it makes him think of funerals. Well, it does, doesn't it? And the smell. Still there you are.”

This time Carolus reached the car.

“The Star at Lilbourne I take it?” said Rupert. “I might have known. There's always a pub in your cases. I believe you like all that phony darts-with-the-locals stuff. Personally, it makes me sick to my stomach. Hacking jackets and pipes and patronizing shove ha'penny.”

“I just want some information,” said Carolus mildly. “And you've heard where we shall find Thickett.”

“If he turns out to be a picturesque gaffer with an accent like a BBC rustic and a clay pipe, I shall walk straight out.”

But Thickett was not like that. He was ginger-haired and had a fine glossy moustache. He sat bolt upright at a white scrubbed table in the clean little public bar of the Star, and eyed Carolus and Rupert with solemn curiosity. The landlord, a jolly little man, served them with bitter and seemed about to start a cheerful conversation when Carolus turned to the roadmender.

“Mr Thickett?”

“That's my name.”

“Mine's Deene. I'm trying to find out something about the death of Miss Carew.”

Mr Thickett sat still, eyeing Carolus without hostility but as though he needed to hear more before speaking.

“I'm acting for her cousin, Miss Tissot.”

Still there was no response from Thickett.

“I understand you found the body?”

“In my humble calling,” pronounced Mr Thickett with no humility in his manner, “I am accustomed to finding all sorts of things left by the roadside.”

“Not corpses, surely?” put in Rupert Priggley.

“Not necessarily corpses,” agreed Mr Thickett, “but all sorts of things.”