The Glimpses of the Moon (30 page)

The by now numerous witnesses of this occurrence confidently expected that the gas would blow up, or the Volkswagen's petrol tank catch fire, or both; they also had no doubt that the two people who had so dramatically disappeared from sight would be seriously injured, or even, perhaps, dead. But nothing of the kind. Crumb, thrown clear of the bonnet, was lying uncomfortably on a grille of rusty but unbreached gas pipes, contused and with his left leg broken, but still with sufficient strength left to search in his pockets for his police whistle, which he presently found and began to blow piercingly. The Volkswagen failed to ignite. And as for Ortrud, there was general astonishment when she clambered out of the hole, tousled and grubby but apparently scarcely scratched, and set off at a run towards the Rover 2000 which she had previously noted and coveted. Its driver was a man, and he was alone. Reaching him, Ortrud wrenched the driver's door open, and he gaped out at her anxiously.

‘Is there anything I can do to help?' asked this gentlemanly person.

Ortrud punched him on the nose, fracturing it to the accompaniment of great gouts of blood, and while he was still reeling from the shock, dragged him out of his seat, adding a chop to the neck for good measure, so that he collapsed in the roadway. But here nemesis overtook her: before she could fling herself into the Rover and make her escape, the two brawnier Gas Board men, who had recognized Crumb as a policeman, ran up and seized her from behind, attempting to pinion her arms behind her in a double lock. One of them she sent staggering with a left hook to the jaw, but the. other was more tenacious and hung on. Also, by this time Crumb's frenetic whistling from the depths of the hole had had its effect: Connabeer with two constables came running out of the police station, and simultaneously, Rankine and
his
constable arrived
back from Aller, and leaped out of the Panda to lend a hand. The tenacious Gas Board man continued somehow to hang on until these reinforcements came up. His mate, recovered, joined him. In the midst of a milling cluster of seven men, even Ortrud had no chance, Kicking, scratching, punching and shrieking obscenities in German she was hustled into the police station and thrown into a cell.

Ruffled but contented, Connabeer returned gratefully to the peace and safety of his desk in the entrance hall. He telephoned for an ambulance, warmly thanked the two Gas Board men, and sent three constables outside to attend to the man from the Rover, get the traffic flowing again, and see if Crumb could be extricated from the hole without worsening his injuries. He then settled down to write out a full report of the incident, and was still doing this, to an accompaniment of distant screams and objurgations from Ortrud Youings's cell, when Ling returned from his solitary walk.

With wordy interpolations from Rankine, Connabeer told Ling all that had happened.

‘Crumb?' said Ling incredulously.
‘Crumb
was responsible for the arrest of this woman?'

‘Yes, sir. I can't think what got into him, I'm sure. But it's a fact.'

‘Well, well,' Ling's melancholy had lifted markedly as he listened, and he was now almost his old confident self again. ‘Marvels will never cease … What on earth is that noise, Sergeant?'

‘It's her, sir. Seems she doesn't take to being locked up.'

‘And where's Inspector Widger?'

‘I don't know, sir. I don't think he's in the building.'

‘I see. Well, I'd better go and talk to the woman, I suppose. Rankine, you can come with me and take shorthand notes.'

‘If you don't mind my saying so, sir,' said Connabeer, ‘I should take some other men with you as well as Rankine. She's a proper wild-cat, that one.'

As it happened, Ling had never met Ortrud. ‘Pooh,' he said
loftily. ‘These people are all the same. Once they're arrested, all the stuffing goes out of them. Where's the key?'

Connabeer handed over the key to Ortrud's cell, and Ling stumped off towards it with Rankine at his heels. Connabeer then summoned a pair of constables and went in pursuit. Ling was not so intent on fitting the key into the lock that he failed to notice this addition to the party, but although he raised his eyebrows sarcastically, he said nothing.

The door of the cell opened, and he marched in.

‘Now, Mrs Youings,' they heard him say, ‘what's all this I've been told about AAAAAAAAGH.' For there was no time for him to complete the question: Ortrud had her fingers round the back of his neck and with her thumbs was exerting considerable pressure on his eyeballs.

Rapidly, though not without a strenuous struggle, they rescued him from being blinded permanently. Connabeer knocked Ortrud to the floor and dragged Ling back out of the door, himself hastily following. He slammed the door and locked it, and they all stood together for a moment in the corridor outside, breathing stertorously.

‘She attacked me,' Ling gasped. ‘She attacked me -
me.
She tried to gouge my eyes out. My God!' With great caution he slid open the judas window. ‘Now, you just listen to me, Mrs Youings,' he said, but all he got in reply was a stream of German, a language with which he was unacquainted.

‘We shall have to get an interpreter,' he said, recovering slightly. ‘Sergeant, is there anyone in the station who speaks German?'

‘I don't think so, sir.'

‘Try and find someone, then. But there's no hurry about it. It's obviously useless to try and question her when she's in this … mood.' He squared his shoulders. ‘Meanwhile, I'd better see the husband. He's in the hospital, I think you said.'

‘Yes, sir. But I don't know how bad he is.'

‘Never mind, I'll go there anyway. Lay on a car and a driver, will you? Oh, and when Inspector Widger turns up, tell him what's happened and where I am.'

‘Very good, sir. Do you want him at the hospital too?'

‘No, I don't think so. Just ask him to wait for me in his office
here. This, Sergeant, may be the break we've been waiting for.'

Arrived at the hospital, Ling found that Youings had had a very narrow escape. Ortrud had struck hard. But fortunately, her husband possessed a thick skull, and to some extent his cloth cap and his thatch of fair hair had protected him. He had been concussed, and there was an extensive, painful scalp wound, but he was no longer on the danger list. A middle-aged, grimvisaged, moustached nurse conducted Ling into the private room in which, at Connabeer's insistence, he had been accommodated, and there Ling found him lying in the high bed with his head swatched in a bandage, pale in the face, drowsy from drugs, but still quite coherent, quite capable of answering questions, and surprisingly firm despite the normal mildness of his character.

A constable who had been sitting in a corner with a notebook and pencil stood up as Ling entered and whispered, ‘He hasn't said anything so far, sir.'

‘Ten minutes only, mind,' the dour nurse said. ‘He needs rest.' She consulted the watch pinned to her bosom and stationed herself by the window. Ling crossed to the bed.

‘Well, Youings, how goes it?' he said in a hushed voice.

Youings smiled wanly. ‘Oh, I'm all right,' he said. ‘I'll live. Glad you've come, because there's things I got to tell you. About Ortrud. I loved that woman, Superintendent. Doted! Would've done anything for her - well, look at all the money I paid out. But ‘tis all over now. She never did treat me right. And this business, ‘tis the last straw. I go into me own house for to fetch a clean shirt, and what do I find? I find her kissing some awful College git wi' bare feet. Well, I've put up wi' things like that for a long time now, and I suppose I'd have gone on putting up wi' it. But picking up the poker and trying to kill me, that's different. Enough's enough, I reckon. I never want to think about her or see her, ever again. I don't care what happens to her, however bad: ‘tis all right by me. From now on, I just want to live me own life,
on
me own.'

The constable scribbled busily. The nurse said disapprovingly, ‘You're talking too much, Mr Youings.' Ling said, ‘She tried to put my eyes out.' He was still smarting under his humiliation.

‘Did she, now?' Youings seemed neither surprised at the revelation nor specially interested in it. ‘Well, well, fancy that.'

‘Did she kill Routh?'

‘Course she did. Who else? That's why I paid out all that money. Blackmail. Someone knew I doted on her, and took advantage.'

The constable scribbled even more busily. ‘Blackmail!' Ling exclaimed. ‘Shhh!' said the nurse.

‘ 'Twouldn't be that Hagberd who killed Routh,' said Youings. ‘ 'E wer' mazed, but ‘e weren't no killer. ‘E just came on the body, accidental like, an' made up ‘is mind to chop it up.'

‘I see,' said Ling. ‘Tell me about the blackmail, then.'

Youings yawned; his initial burst of garrulity was spent, and from now on Ling was obliged to ask him specific questions. The day after Routh's murder he had received an unsigned typewritten letter, he said, informing him that his wife had committed the crime, and that if he didn't pay up, the writer would go to the police. Every Tuesday he was to put fifty pounds in used notes in the hollow of a particular tree in Holt's Wood; he was not to linger there, or notify the authorities, or Ortrud would be arrested. Youings had a few investments; he had hurriedly realized these, and had done exactly what he was told. Ortrud was then still infinitely precious to him, and the thought of her in prison had pierced him to the heart. He had never even dreamed of disobeying.

‘But proof, man,' said Ling incredulously. ‘What proof did The Letter-writer give that your wife was involved in the Routh murder?'

None, Youings said, causing Ling to sigh heavily: he hadn't had any actual proof. But he taxed Ortrud with the accusation, and she had cheerfully admitted its truth, saying it was good riddance. Shocked, Youings had none the less been able to see the force of this: like everyone else except Mrs Leeper-Foxe, he had thought Routh a horrible man; and no doubt there were extenuating circumstances, though Ortrud had not deigned to give him any details. Anyway, at all costs she must be kept out of prison, so he had paid, and had continued to pay right up to this afternoon, when Ortrud had hit him with the poker and radically changed his mind for him.

Had he kept the blackmailing letter? No, he had burned it. Had he any idea at all who the blackmailer might be? No, none.

The nurse again looked at her watch, saying, ‘That's enough for now. Time's up. You can come back tomorrow.' And Ling was content to go: there were still details to be filled in, but he had the main outline.

‘And you can take him' - here the nurse indicated the constable - ‘away with you. We don't want a lot of bluebottles cluttering up the place.' She propelled both men towards the door.

‘Ask Farmer Tully to send someone to see to the pigs, will you?' were Youings's final words. ‘I'll soon be back.'

Then quite suddenly he fell asleep.

Heading for the exit, Ling and the constable encountered Crumb being trollied back beneath a blanket from the operating theatre to the ward. He was much bandaged, and his broken leg was in a plaster cast. Still under the anaesthetic, he was snoring squeakily. They ignored him and went on out to the car.

On the drive back to the police station, Ling could barely contain his exhilaration. He burst into Widger's office, where he found Widger, at last returned from Aller, in the desk chair finishing off a telephone call.

‘We've got her!' Ling said exultantly.

‘We've got Ortrud Youings, certainly,' said Widger. He stood up, so that his superior could have the desk chair.

Ling, however, waved the offer graciously aside. ‘You've heard what happened?' he said.

‘Yes, Eddie, I've heard what happened this afternoon. Connabeer told me. He also told me you'd gone to the hospital to see Youings. How is he?'

‘Oh, he's all right. But now, just you listen, Charles, to what
he
had to say.' And Ling gave Widger the gist of the interview. ‘She admitted it,' he gloated. ‘She
admitted
to her husband that she killed Routh.'

‘So we were wrong about Hagberd,' said Widger. ‘Poor Hagberd.'

‘Never you mind about Hagberd,' said Ling. ‘Hagberd's
insane. He's where he belongs anyway. The great thing is that we've got the woman.'

‘Yes, I can visualize Ortrud coshing Routh,' said Widger thoughtfully. ‘She pinches the wrench from Luckraft's motorcycle kit. She goes for a walk, carrying it. She meets Routh accidentally. He takes her into Bawdeys Meadow, pretending he wants to seduce her. But then when it gets to the point, he only jeers at her. She's furious. She loses her temper and hits him. Yes, it all fits.'

‘Of course it fits. She's a devil, she'd try anything. When I went to talk to her, she tried to blind me.'

‘But what about the other two murders - Mavis Trent and the man in the Botticelli tent?'

‘She did those too.'

‘Why?'

‘
Why?
Well, I suppose as regards Mavis Trent, she pushed her over Hole Bridge because she was jealous.'

‘You mean Mavis was having an affair with Youings?'

‘Could be. She had affairs with lots of men.'

‘Um,' said Widger. ‘And what about the other murder?'

‘I dare say it was some boy friend she wanted to get rid of.'

‘But, Eddie, we haven't got a shred of proof. It's - '

‘Don't you worry about that, old squire. We'll find the proof all right, now that we know where to look for it.'

‘But - but how did she get the severed arm out of the tent? Everyone agrees that she never went
into
it.'

‘An accomplice. Probably her husband.'

‘Well, then, how did he get the arm out?'