The Glimpses of the Moon (19 page)

One of the erections which actually was completed was the Botticelli tent, all ready for the installation of its pious treasure in the morning; and it was as he sidled towards this that Scorer became aware that he hadn't the Aller House gardens entirely to himself. Peering round a corner of the rifle range, he saw -and to some extent heard - two indistinct figures in conversation just outside the flap of the Botticelli tent.

‘Sex?' Ling demanded.

But here, as elsewhere, Scorer was unhelpful. Visibility had been almost nil, the figures mere shadows. What he could say was that one of the shadows had been unusually tall, so if it had been a woman, she must have been a giantess. Then there were the voices: one of them consistently whispered, the other was normal (though 'la-di-da'), but low-toned; Scorer had been unable to make out which of the figures was the whisperer, and had certainly been unable to distinguish anything of what was being whispered. From the other voice, however, he had managed to glean a word or two here and there - Mavis Trent, a letter, the police.

These tantalizing intimations reduced Ling to a sub-acute frenzy, and he wasted a good deal of time in attempting to get Scorer to enlarge on them. But when the dust had settled, it was found that nothing further had emerged. 'Very well, then,' said Ling, disgruntled. 'What happened next?'

And what happened next was certainly sensational enough. There had been a sudden blur of movement, and a loud
crack,
and the tall figure had collapsed on the ground in a crumpled heap.

'Crack!'
Scorer shouted quaveringly, almost falling off his chair at the recollection. 'An' down 'e went!'

‘Crack?
Do you mean it was a gunshot?'

‘Naw. More like a sort of thud, like.'

‘Then why did you say - no, never mind. More like a sort of thud. And then?'

Then, apparently, the shorter figure had stood quite still for a few moments (looking around him, Widger presumed, to see if
the assault had been witnessed). He had then stooped over the taller figure on the ground, and had seemed to be examining its head. Finally he had grasped it under the armpits and dragged it inside the Botticelli tent.

Scorer had providently remained where he was; wild horses wouldn't have dragged him any closer. There followed an interim during which nothing much appeared to be happening. Then dim torchlight - so dim as to be almost imperceptible through the canvas walls - was switched on in the tent's rear section, where all the odds and ends were dumped, and moved about as if its owner were searching for something. Whatever it was, it was soon found. The torchlight steadied; there came a brief hiatus, and then a sound of
sawing.

At this point, Scorer had apparently fainted.

The first thing he noticed when he recovered his senses was that although the torch was still on inside the tent, the sawing had ceased; the second, that a light was shining in a window of the Major's basement flat. A door banged, letting loose a tumult of barking; the torch inside the Botticelli tent was extinguished. The barking approached at an even pace, suggesting that its perpetrator was on a leash.

‘ 'Twere the Major,' Scorer explained, ‘taking 'is bluidy span-nel for walkies.'

Both Major and dog were still, however, a fair way off when the man in the tent decided to make himself scarce. Scorer saw him push his way out into the open - but this time his outline was strange, bulky and distorted (he must have been carrying the head, Widger reflected, and probably the clothes as well). Scorer cowered. But the shadow, unaware of him, was concentrating on the Major, who had now switched on his own torch and was perceptibly heading in his direction. The barking increased in volume; the bulky shadow slipped away into the darkness. And Scorer did the same: he had no wish to be discovered lurking in the grounds by the Major. Creeping away, he was slightly heartened to hear a car start up and move off distantly in the lane; that, he thought, must be the shadow. But he was still suffering from violent palpitations when he got home again, leaving the Major, his cocker bitch Sal and whatever lay
in the Botticelli tent alone in the Aller House policies under the wan starlight,

‘My God, what a witness!' said Ling, when Scorer, still clamouring for police protection, had been conducted out of the office and downstairs again by a constable summoned by telephone for the purpose. 'Charles, I suppose that all that was true?'

‘Oh, I should think so, yes.'

‘I mean, he wasn't just saying it all to make a sensation?'

‘No, no, Eddie. He'd be too afraid of the consequences.'

‘So he actually witnessed the murder. That is, unless the tall man was just knocked out outside the tent, and finished off inside.'

‘Well, it doesn't make much odds, does it?'

‘It might make a difference to the
method
of murder.'

‘Didn't Sir John say anything about that?'

‘No, he didn't.'

‘Well,' said Widger, 'my bet would be that the victim was killed outside the tent - probably coshed, like Routh.'

‘The same murderer?'

‘One supposes so.'

‘Or it might be imitative.'

‘Possibly … One thing is,' said Widger with more energy, 'that we shall have to keep after Scorer, and try to get some more out of him.'

‘And do you think we'll succeed?'

‘No.'

Ling sighed. He returned his pipe to his right-hand jacket pocket. Then he fumbled in his left-hand jacket pocket and brought out
another
pipe. 'Looks as if the Major's in the clear,' he remarked. 'That is, if Scorer's telling the truth.'

Widger stared. 'Good God, Eddie,' he said. 'You weren't suspecting the Major, were you?'

‘At this stage, old squire, we've got to suspect everyone. Anyway, we'll see the Major now, straight away, and find out what he was up to.'

‘He was taking his dog for a walk.'

‘I was thinking that perhaps he might have heard the sawing.'

‘We'll ask him.'

Nay, who but infants question in such wise?

Dante Gabriel Rossetti:
Fragment

The Major approached the office singing. ‘The savour, the flavour,' he sang, 'of the great liddle cube. Oxo,' he explained, entering. ‘I find the high notes in that one a bit difficult - though I suppose that if one started a bit lower down … The savour, the flavour,' he rumbled.

Ling frowned. ‘Major,' he said, ‘I don't have to tell you what a serious matter this is.'

‘Paraleipsis,' said the Major. ‘No, no, my dear fellow, of course you don't. Dreadful business, dreadful - though not of course as dreadful as if one knew who the poor fellow was. And I suppose one doesn't know that, not yet awhile,' he added hopefully.

‘Please sit down, Major. We have a few questions to ask you.'

The Major settled alertly on the edge of the chair. ‘Ask away.'

‘We understand that you were out and about after midnight on Friday.'

‘Yes, well, not exactly.'

‘Whatever do you mean, Major?'

‘Well, I was in bed, you see, trying to read
Adam Bede
. I don't know if you've ever tried to read
Adam Bede?
'

‘Please keep to the point.'

‘I was just coming to it. Let me see, where was I? Yes,
Adam Bede
. I was snug in bed, trying to read
Adam Bede
. And then, d'you see, I remembered.'

‘Remembered what?'

‘Remembered that I ought to have put Sal out. Sal has a sweet nature, but there's no doubt she barks rather a lot. She barks when there's someone about. Come to that, she barks
when there's no one about, except me. Come to that, she barks in her sleep.'

‘And you put her out every night?'

‘Good gracious, no, my dear fellow. What a cruel suggestion. No, it was the Fête, don't you know. People leave things overnight - silly of them, really - and last year there was some pilfering. So I said that this year I'd tie Sal up outside the Botticelli tent, which is where most of the stuff gets dumped, and then if anyone came around snooping she'd bark and wake me up, and I'd go out and find out what was going on. It was a mild night, fortunately, and if it had come on to rain Sal could have gone into the tent, and of course I was going to put down food and water for her. Only then I went to bed and forgot. It was only when she started chewing at
Adam Bede
that I remembered.'

‘You didn't hear any unusual noises from the grounds, at that time?'

‘Well, that's a queer thing, because as a matter of fact I did. There was a sort of muffled sawing sound … I say: could that have been when the poor fellow was having his head cut off?'

‘We think it may have been.'

‘Pity I missed it,' said the Major. ‘I mean, pity I missed the person who was doing it.'

‘If you ask me, Major,' put in Widger, 'you were lucky not to blunder in on it.'

‘Yes, well, perhaps I am a bit old to go tackling ghouls in the middle of the night,' the Major admitted. ‘Is Hagberd safe?'

‘Safe?'

‘Yes. I mean, he hasn't escaped or anything.'

‘Hagberd's perfectly safe,' said Ling. ‘That was one of the first things we checked on.'

‘I wouldn't have minded if it had been Hagberd, d'you see? Nice gentle man, except where Routh and Mrs Leeper-Foxe were concerned.'

‘Well, it wasn't.'

‘That's a good thing, then. I remember once saying to Hagberd, “Hagberd,” I said - '

‘Major, will you please get on with your story.'

‘Well, yes, certainly I will. That's what I'm here for, isn't it? I
managed to
get Adam Bede
away from Sal, and then I slipped on a dressing-gown, and then I got out the Supavite Doggy-woggy, and then I hunted about a bit for my torch, and by that time the sawing had stopped.'

‘You put on the light in your front room.'

‘Yes, naturally, my dear fellow. I wasn't going to do all that in the pitch dark, was I now?'

‘Go on.'

‘There isn't much more. I put Sal on the lead, and went out, and headed straight for the Botticelli tent. Sal barked a lot at first, which probably meant there was someone about, but when we got nearer she quietened down a bit, which probably meant they'd gone. Anyway, I tied Sal up at the entrance, and went in and took a look round, just in case, but there was nobody.'

‘You went into the back part of the tent?'

‘Oh yes, definitely, because that's where everything's put. The Misses Bale don't like it a bit, but I say to them, “Titty,” I say -or as it may be, “Tatty” - their names are Titania and Tatiana -that awful mother of theirs - '

‘And there was nobody there either?'

‘Quite right, my dear fellow. Nobody.'

‘Did you happen to notice a large piece of canvas spread out on the ground in a corner?'

‘Well, yes, now you come to mention it, I did. Don't tell me that's where the body was.'

‘We think so.'

‘Terrible thing, terrible. And you'd think that at any rate I'd have smelt the blood, wouldn't you? A very distinctive smell, blood has. I remember once – '

‘And it didn't occur to you to look under the canvas, to see if there was a pilferer hiding there?'

‘No, it didn't, I'm afraid. You see, by that time Sal had stopped barking altogether, and she wouldn't have done that if there'd been anyone about for miles around, under a piece of canvas or not. So I just flashed my torch around and went out again. Then I did a little tour of the grounds, and then I went back to bed and
Adam Bede
again, with bits chewed out of it. That soon sent me to sleep, I can tell you.'

‘And you weren't disturbed at all?'

'No, I wasn't. As a matter of fact, I slept rather late, but then several local chaps turned up to finish off the stalls and marquees and so forth, and of course Sal started barking, and that was what eventually woke me.'

‘About when?'

‘About ten.'

‘One other thing, Major. Did you hear any unusual noises apart from the sawing?'

The Major looked doubtful. Well, there was a car,' he said. Widger and Ling exchanged significant glances. ‘That,' the Major went on, 'was when I'd just come out of the flat with Sal, and was heading for the Botticelli tent. A car started up and drove off, somewhere out in the lane. Might have been lovers, of course, but I very seldom hear traffic so late at night. Usually it's dead quiet.'

Ling nodded. He rummaged in the folder containing Widger's report until he found the page he wanted. ‘Now, Major, you were one of the people who visited the … the Botticelli tent during the Fête.'

‘Absolutely right, officer, I was. Mind you, it's quite outrageous for Titty and Tatty to charge fifty pence for looking at that frightful daub, and I can't really afford it, but I hate to disappoint the old girls. They're not mad about anything else, don't you know, just about the Botticelli. They think someone's going to steal it from them, and it's only because of the Church, or perhaps I should say the Rector, that they let it out of the house at all.'

‘And what did you do when you were inside?'

‘I sat down and had a nap.'

‘I see. You didn't go into the rear section at all?'

‘Not unless I was walking in my sleep.'

‘And you didn't hear anything from there? More sawing, for instance?'

‘My dear fellow, someone could have let off a bazooka, and I shouldn't have heard it. It was that pop group, d'you see? They were wired up to loudspeakers all over the place, and there was one just outside. Luckily Titty and Tatty are a bit deaf - you should hear them saying the Nicene Creed, quite out of time with everyone else - or I'm sure they'd have protested.'