The nodding canaries mrs.., p.4
The Nodding Canaries (Mrs. Bradley), page 4
“Her’s put back, but her ent put back right.”
Dame Beatrice produced her plan and the man marked Number Five with the pencil she gave him.
“Now,” she said, getting out of the car, “take me to the spot above ground which would be over this walling.”
He led the way, and Laura, who had been keeping within distance in order not to miss anything of interest, came galloping up. The man stopped, lay down on the heath, and put his ear to the ground.
“Her’s right below me here.”
“How do you know? Did you pace it?” asked Laura. The man rose stiffly to his feet.
“No, mam. I guesses, and when I thinks I’m about there I lays down and listens.”
“What for?”
“To hear her breathing. They walls breathes because of the holes in ’em. Hear ’em plain, you can, if you understands ’em.”
Laura found this difficult to believe, but she knew better than to question the word of an aficionado, so she said,
“Really? That’s very interesting.”
“Now,” said Dame Beatrice briskly, “I want Number Five walling taken down. Can you manage it single-handed, Mr. Chipping?”
“Take me some time, mam, but it’s got to be done single-handed owing to the narrow tunnels and them being not much higher than a fox’s den.”
“What length of time do you consider necessary? Would it be better to wait until tomorrow morning?”
“That’s onnecessary. Number Five ent more nor four feet acrost. Say a couple of hours to clear her. I’ll have to bring every stone back to the main shaft, you see. No room to stack ’em otherwise.”
“Would it help to have a couple of men behind you so that you could pass the stones back from one to another?”
“Ah, that’s a very good idea. That ’ud save time, wouldn’t it?” (It would also make certain that he was kept under supervision, Dame Beatrice thought.)
The two policemen had no objection to assisting in the manner suggested, and Laura, who was determined to be included in the proceedings, volunteered to do the stacking at the bottom of the main shaft, which was very roughly circular and, at its widest, about fifteen feet across.
Thus shared, the labour took considerably less time than Chipping had estimated. Then the party, led by Laura, who was nearest the ladder, emerged, and Chipping, coining last, made his report. Dame Beatrice had warned him of what he might find, and he had found it.
“That be Mr. Breydon-Waters, as was as clever as a parson, and now as dead as a nail in his own coffin, mam. Knowing what you told me afore I went down, I didn’t touch un, but that’s who it is, all right, and three small cylinders of calor gas a-laying there beside him.”
“I should wish to go down,” said Dame Beatrice. “How about it, Superintendent? You said that you would not obstruct me.”
The Superintendent tilted his hat to the back of his head.
“I never really bargain for you being wholly right about the body being down there,” he said. “But I’ll stick to what I said if you’ll agree to me going down with you. Ames,” he added, turning to one of the constables, “get over to the hut and use the chap’s telephone to get on to our doctor and the rest of the mob. I reckon it’s a suicide, but it doesn’t do to take chances, so we’ll photograph him and take prints from the cylinders, just to make sure.”
“A nice job you’ll have, photographing him in they little old galleries,” said Chipping.
Dame Beatrice, taking back the powerful torch with which she had supplied Chipping, descended the almost vertical iron ladder backwards and disappeared from view. She was small, thin, and agile enough to make fairly good time past the stacked dry-stone walling, now reduced to a number of rough blocks in the main opening, and she reached the body well ahead of the powerfully built Superintendent, who had followed her down the shaft.
The body was lying face-downwards and a very brief examination made it clear that the butane had been a subsidiary cause of death. The murderer had taken no chances. The victim had received a vicious blow on the back of the head. The wound had bled freely. The man’s shirt—he was without a jacket—was stiff with blood and his hair was matted with it.
Dame Beatrice flashed her torch around the ghostly walls of chalk, rough with nodules of flint. By the side of the body, partly on a rough shelf of chalk and partly on the floor of the flint-mine, was a very primitive fertility shrine.
“Well, whatever interested you down here, it was hardly that,” she thought, glancing at the goddess but apostrophising the body, “for you had almost crawled past it when you were struck down. What were you after, then, I wonder?—and who followed you into this eerie place in order to kill you?”
She flashed her torch again and then, finding room for the Superintendent to join her, for the dead man was lying at the foot of a seven-foot shaft, she made way for him to see the body. The Superintendent, using his own torch, made a cursory inspection and then grunted.
“How right you were, madam,” he said. “It’s murder. He’d been dragged forward clear of the wall, too. See the marks? The doctor’ll have to see him in the mortuary, I reckon. He can’t very well examine him down here.”
CHAPTER THREE
Nodding Acquaintances
“Life’s night begins: let him never come back to us!
There would be doubt, hesitation and pain,
Forced praise on our part—the glimmer of twilight,
Never glad confident morning again!”
Robert Browning
An adjournment of the inquest upon the remains of Oliver George Roskde Breydon-Waters followed the formal identification of the body, the report of how it had come to be found at Pigmy’s Ladder, and the medical evidence. Incidentally, there were no fingerprints on the cylinders.
“One of life’s little ironies again,” said Laura, commenting upon this last item as she and Dame Beatrice left the coroner’s court.
“What is?” asked Alice, who met them outside for lunch.
“That what will settle the murder’s hash is that entirely unnecessary business of the calor gas. The other doctors and Mrs. Croc. are agreed that a knock on the head killed this Breydon-Waters and that the calor gas was redundant, yet it was only the calor gas, with its unfortunate effect upon your two r-r-rivals, which brought Mrs. Croc. and me galloping to the rescue. If the murderer hadn’t used the butane, the body could have remained safely entombed until the Judgment Day, so far as I can see.”
“The man would have been missed and a search made.”
“Yes, no doubt, but who was going to think of searching a walled-up bit of Pigmy’s Ladder?”
“I see what you mean, Dog, but, as he was a member of the archaeological society, somebody would have thought of it sooner or later, don’t you think?”
“Probably a good deal later,” said Dame Beatrice. “It was put about that he had gone to Palestine.”
“I wonder who spread that report?” said Laura. “If the police could find that out, they’d have their murderer, I should imagine.”
“I suppose,” said Alice, “that, now I’m cleared, you two will go back to Wandles Parva.”
“By no means,” said Dame Beatrice. “My curiosity has been aroused by this unusual case and I should like to be on the spot to see what line the police are going to take. There are points of great interest about this crime. The place in which the victim was killed, the use of butane, and the supposition, amounting almost to certainty, that the murderer is a member of the archaeological society, all combine to make up a fascinating problem of which I feel I must learn the solution.”
“Oh, good!” said Laura. “I’ll pop down to the vicarage and secure possession of my son to relieve Mrs. Pierce of what must be, by now, an intolerable burden, and transfer myself to the Gauntlet. Hamish adores hotels and is apt to be rather less of a fiend in them than elsewhere.”
“I’d love to look after Hamish in my flat,” said Alice, “but the landlord has a prejudice against dogs and children and, anyway, I haven’t a third bed. You’ll keep in touch with me, though, won’t you? Apart from liking your company, I’m naturally rather interested in the case, too.”
“I bet you are,” Laura agreed. “And you surely don’t suppose I could live in the same town as you and not keep in touch, do you? Close touch, at that.”
“Fine. Well, today being Saturday and tomorrow Sunday, what about my coming down to Wandles with you? I could drive you there and back, and that would leave Dame Beatrice the use of her own car, with George to drive her about.”
This plan was adopted, and on Sunday evening, just in time for the hotel dinner, Laura and Alice, with the small Hamish, returned to Nodding. Hamish, who had slept during a considerable part of the journey, insisted upon being allowed to join the party at table, and rapidly and expertly consumed thick soup, a portion of sole bonne femme, and a tournedos with French fried potatoes. He then demanded ice-cream and got it.
“Good heavens!” exclaimed Alice, fascinated by the way the six-year-old cleared his plate. “Is it really all right for him to have all that at this time of night?”
“Yes,” said Hamish, nodding vigorously, polishing off the last of the ice-cream and helping himself to an apple. “It is really all right. I will soon be as big as Daddy. Bigger than Daddy,” he added, as an afterthought, “and I won’t ever clean my teeth.” He stared aggressively at his mother.
“All right,” said Laura, indifferently. “Pity they should all drop out, because then you won’t ever be able to eat steak again.”
Hamish thought deeply as he bit cleanly into the apple.
“I will clean my teeth whenever there is steak,” he stated. On the following morning Dame Beatrice paid another visit to the Castle Museum. Her object this time was to obtain a list of the names and addresses of the members of the Nodding and District Archaeological Society. Upon her enquiring whether there was such a list, the attendant on duty at the turnstile, remembering her former visit and her reception by the curator, produced one and offered no objection when she copied the names and addresses into her notebook. She then returned to the hotel to study the information she had obtained.
There appeared to be fifteen full members still alive. The curator’s name was Ronald Downing and he was, as she already knew, president of the society. His son Peter was also a member. The secretary was someone called David Gold. He had a son named Michael, who was a member too. Then there was Philip Carfrae, the treasurer, whose name was followed by that of a daughter. The other members were Terence Vindella, Francis Bell, Samuel Brent, James Chipping (the expert whom Dame Beatrice had already met and who was listed as an honorary member only), Harry Glover, Albert Sansfoy, William Streatley, Miss Priscilla Clarke, and Mrs. Constance Rambeau.
Dame Beatrice’s next concern was to obtain a street map of Nodding in order to find out where these people lived. In the case of the two women, the address was Winstone Park, a caravan site which was not marked on the map and to which she would have to be directed. Albert Sansfoy, it proved later, also occupied a caravan, but the site was at the end of a road, and although the name of the road and a “house” number gave no clue to the type of dwelling, it was easy enough to find where the Sansfoys lived.
Except in the cases of the curator and of the dead man, who, as she had learned at the inquest, had been a school-master, there was nothing on the list to indicate the trade, profession, or vocation of any of the members. She would have supposed them to be members of the professional classes, with a complement of artists, perhaps, except that she already knew that Brent and Chipping were employed as wage-earners at the museum and the Town Hall respectively. Judging from the map, Albert Sansfoy’s home did not appear to be in the most fashionable part of the residential quarter, but that need have no particular significance. People lived where they could. She made up her mind to visit him first.
She had already suggested to the Superintendent that she should make some semi-official enquiries into Breydon-Waters’s death in the flint-mines, and that enlightened and painstaking officer had agreed that she might obtain evidence other than that which would be gained by the police.
“There aren’t many families who have nothing to hide from us,” he had said, out of the depths of a vast experience, “and they’re afraid of giving themselves away. A touch of tax-dodging, a bit missing out of the till, or a second little nest with a bird in it, are quite enough to shut their mouths, even though they know we’re after something quite different. So do you go right ahead, ma’am, and get what you can. You’ll let us have anything which appertain, of course.”
“What about me?” asked Laura, when she was apprised of Dame Beatrice’s plan to visit Albert Sansfoy. “Do I go with you?”
“I would prefer to go alone, at any rate for the first time,” Dame Beatrice replied. “Later on I may need you. Mr. Breydon-Waters was a school-master, it appears, and, as Miss Boorman is a schoolmistress and you yourself were trained for the profession, both of you may be extremely helpful at some future time.”
Laura gracefully accepted this ruling, and Dame Beatrice had George, the chauffeur, drive her to the Sansfoys’ address. It lay in what was virtually a suburb of the city at the foot of a long, winding incline which ended on the caravan site. Here the Sansfoys lived in a small van, third along a line of others. It was a permanent camp, and each family had marked out an area of the rough grass, dug it up, and cultivated some of it, for flowers bloomed and there were small patches of potatoes and beans. The address of the site was that of the long, winding road down which Dame Beatrice had driven, and each caravan was numbered by having a metal label pegged on to the grass in front of it.
Beside the Sansfoys’ home a young woman was playing at ball with a small child. Dame Beatrice enquired for Mr. Albert Sansfoy and learned that the young woman was his wife.
“Bert’s on duty. He’s a bus driver,” she said. “Did you want him specially?” She looked with polite but obvious curiosity at the Jaguar, at the impeccable George, and at the elderly and startlingly-dressed visitor.
“I did want to see him, yes,” this visitor replied. “It is about the archaeological society.”
“Come in, then, please. Maybe I can tell you what you want to know.”
“In order to avoid any semblance of entering your home under false pretences, I must tell you that I am working with the police.”
“Oh, yes? Well, Bert’s got nothing to hide, I’m sure, and neither haven’t I. It’s about that gentleman that died in Pigmy’s Ladder, I suppose?”
“It is, indeed.”
“The police have been here, of course, and they ask Bert and me a lot of questions, but we couldn’t help them. They were very nosey about the gas we use for cooking.”
“Calor gas?”
“That’s right. But, as I tell ’em, everybody use it around the vans, not one more than another.”
“What persuaded your husband to join the archaeological society?” Dame Beatrice asked, after she had been ushered into the van. It appeared that his interest had been aroused by his history master when he was a boy at school.
“Mr. Timberley used to take the boys out and about,” Mrs. Sansfoy explained. “Old churches, which we have plenty of around here, and things Rooman and the Castle Museum. That take his boys everywhere, and explain it to them.”
“Admirable. How long ago would this have been?”
“My Bert, that’s twenty-seven this last March. He leave school at fifteen and a-half.”
“And how long has he been a member of the society?”
“Oo, since that leave school. Mr. Timberley was a member and he recommend Bert to them and pay his first year’s subscription, and Bert, that never lose interest.”
“But Mr. Timberley himself is no longer a member, I notice. How is that?”
“That move away north to be headmaster.”
“Oh, yes, I see. One more question, if you will be so good. I am working with the police, as I told you. We have to discover who is responsible for Mr. Breydon-Waters’s death. Have they asked your husband about any enmities, rivalries, or quarrels among the members?”
“They ask that very particular, but Bert didn’t know of anything. That wouldn’t, perhaps, though, unless it concern Sam Brent or Jimmy Chipping. The rest are different—school-teachers and bankers and such-like, and Mr. Streatley with the money that cover the cost of digging and that.”
“Has your husband expressed any opinions about Mr. Breydon-Waters’s death?”
“That was fairly knocked back about it. Can’t understand it at all. Can’t understand why anybody in the Society should have been in Pigmy’s Ladder at that time. There isn’t anything new to see there. There’s nothing that hasn’t been found out already, so Bert say.”
“Can you tell me when I shall be able to find your husband at home?”
“That’s on early mornings from tomorrow, so he knock off in the middle of the day and go on again after tea.”
“Will you tell him to expect me at three o’clock tomorrow? I shall not take up much of his time.”
“I’ll tell him,” said Mrs. Sansfoy, “but I doubt whether that listen. Head in the clouds except when he’s driving his bus.”
“He had no personal reason for disliking Mr. Breydon-Waters, I take it?”
Mrs. Sansfoy looked at her.
“I wouldn’t be the one to say so, even if he have,” she said. “You’d better go for to ask him that yourself.”
Dame Beatrice nodded—and waited. There was a silence which was broken by the small child, who climbed up the steps into the caravan and demanded cake.
“One thing I can say, and no particular harm done,” said Mrs. Sansfoy suddenly. “If Bert dislike Mr. Breydon-Waters, there are others that dislike him more than Bert have.”
