Death in the dark, p.16
Death in the Dark, page 16
“It’s queer you should ask that. I’m her friend, I’d do anything for her, and she knows it, but she hasn’t trusted me. That’s hurt me, see. Mrs. Sturmer—that’s her aunt—but you know that if you’re a friend of hers—Mrs. Sturmer wrote me that Judy had gone into the country to stay with friends. Then only the other day she wrote me again. Some other friends have taken her on a cruise, a long cruise until it’s all over. Well, that took my breath away. Judy on a cruise, sun bathing and what not, while her brother is being hanged. Sounds cold-blooded, doesn’t it. And not like Judy. I can’t get it somehow. She—well, she’d been my ideal of what a girl ought to be, warm-hearted, straight as a die, loyal to her pals, and this cruise business has messed it all up. I mean, it’s out of character, see.”
“Did she write to you herself telling her plans, or did you hear from the aunt?”
“From the aunt. And that hurts too. She might have sent me a line.”
“Is the aunt a reliable sort of person?”
“You haven’t met her? I see. Oh, quite. Absolutely. I understood that Judy was to make her home with Mrs. Sturmer, and that seemed okay. She’s not posh, you know, not class. She was in the show business when she was a girl. She married a German hairdresser and he was interned when the war broke out and died of ’flu just before the armistice. She turned the hairdresser’s shop into a dress agency and she’s been running it ever since. She brought up Judy and her brothers. I don’t know what she thinks of Judy running off like this. Of course one can’t blame the kid really,” said Ben loyally. “She’s been desperately unhappy. She wants to forget if she can. We ought to be glad she doesn’t insist on waiting outside the prison to hear the bell toll.”
“One never knows how people will react in such circumstances,” said Collier. “I suppose nobody here doubts that her brother committed the murder.”
“Poor devil. No. His wife was ill, and her mother was pestering him for money. She one of the witnesses for the prosecution. Gosh, how she hated him. Very prim and pi and as hard as nails. You couldn’t make her see that she’s driven him to it. If I’d only known he was so hard up I could have let him have a pound or two. Mind you, I’m sure the murder was unpremeditated. He saw the open safe and was tempted and then the old man caught him at it and he struck out blindly.”
“His sister wouldn’t admit that. She believes in his innocence.”
“I know she does. Bless her. Poor little Judy. That’s why that damned cruise sticks in my throat. I can’t swallow it somehow. Well, good night. Pleased to have met you. Look in again—”
The assistant stage manager of the Palace had seen one of the usherettes trying to attract his attention. He shook Collier’s hand warmly and rushed off, leaving Collier to finish his drink and consider his next move.
CHAPTER XVI
NO ADMITTANCE
Collier rang up Sandra and told her he might not be home for some days. He always kept a suitcase packed with everything he might need in his locker at the Yard and he had brought that down to Holton with him. After some minutes spent in studying a local road map he left the Palace Theatre and made his way through the drizzling rain to the rather ill-lit residential quarter of the town that had been the scene of the murder.
He had no difficulty in finding Laurel Lodge. The entrance to the drive bristled with house agents’ boards. He fancied they would not easily find a purchaser. He walked from there to the station through tree-lined roads bordered with detached houses standing in their own grounds. Once he saw the red tail light of a car disappearing in the distance, but he did not meet a single pedestrian. He noted, too, that there was a side path leading up to the station platform as well as the main entrance. If there was a third person at the Lodge at the time of the crime it would evidently have been quite possible for him to get away unnoticed.
At the Station Hotel, where he had booked a room for the night, he went into the coffee room to thaw himself at the fire. Two commercial travellers who were there before him were bemoaning their fate at having to be on the road while traffic was still disorganised by the Christmas rush. From the elder of the two he learned to his dismay that it would be almost impossible to reach Bedesford before noon.
“The only way you could get there would be by getting the night mail to Salisbury. You’d be landed there round about 11.50, and get an early local train on to Bedesford.”
Collier worked it out himself with two time tables and saw that the commercial traveller was right. He had been looking forward to a night’s rest, but it could not be helped.
He was in the public gallery of the old Town Hall of Bedesford when the inquest on James Bateman was opened by the coroner, sitting with a jury, the following morning. He had enjoyed a hearty breakfast at the King’s Head and had been refreshed by a hot bath and a shave.
Apparently very little public interest had been aroused in the neighbourhood by the tragedy. The gallery was sparsely filled by the local unemployed who had drifted in to pass the time and keep out of the rain. Under the new ruling the jury was not compelled to view the body, and the proceedings began with the calling of the manager of the South Western Bank, in the High Street, who gave evidence of identification. He had known the deceased since 1919 when he came to Sard Manor to act as the late Mr. Ramblett’s assistant. Mr. Ramblett had a collection of wild animals and what had formerly been the park and pasture land attached to the estate had been laid out by him as a zoological garden. After his death a few years ago Bateman had been retained by Mrs. Ramblett to look after the place.
“Had he any means beyond his salary?”
“So far as I know he had not, but he lived in a cottage in the gardens and spent very little on himself. He banked his salary and never spent it all. He has quite a good balance.”
“You were on friendly terms with him?”
“I knew him as well as anyone knew him, I think, but he wasn’t a man to make friends. He never came into the town except on business. He didn’t play golf or tennis.”
“Did he ever mention any relatives?”
“He told me once that he was quite alone in the world.”
“I see. Thank you.”
The next witness, a rough looking man, was called and came to stand by the coroner’s table.
“Your name is Tom Bowles, and you are the head keeper at Sard Manor?”
“That’s right, sir.”
“Will you tell the jury how you found the body?”
“Well, me and Jerry had gone over to Exeter that afternoon to fetch a plough horse that had dropped down dead the night before. The farmer rang us up, see. Our animals are fed mostly on horseflesh, and it’s a bit of a job to get it. There’s another chap working at Sard—old Curie—but he had a poisoned finger and Doctor Farwell told him to go along to the cottage hospital and get them to lance it, so he had the afternoon off. Mr. Bateman was alone there, see, from round about two until a bit after six. Jerry said to me, ‘There’s something wrong,’ as soon as ever I’d backed the lorry into the yard where me and Curie cut up the meat and all that. I didn’t have to be told. You never heard such a yelping and screeching. It sounded as if all the animals had gone mad. It was past their feeding time and normally they’d have been fairly quiet. I went into my cottage and fetched my old army pistol. I got a licence for it so I’m not afraid to mention it. And I got my torch and Jerry fetched a stable lanthorn. It was quite dark by that time. We went round by the wolves enclosure and they were all huddled together and yapping and snarling. It looked like fright to me. I’d got a notion by that time that the tiger had got out of his cage, and I didn’t altogether fancy walking about in the dark with that beast loose on the hillside. As for Jerry, his teeth were chattering like the keys of a typewriter. We stuck together like glue, but we went on. The monkeys in the monkey house were whimpering like sick children and Jerry wanted to go to them, but by then I could hear Selim moving about in his cage. I thought ‘Thank God!’ and then I switched on my torch and I saw Mr. Bateman inside lying close to the door. He was dead. No mistake about that. He’d been badly mauled, especially about the head, but Selim wasn’t guarding him as those beasts usually guard their kill. He was as far away as he could get and prowling up and down and grumbling under his breath. He wasn’t frightened. You can’t frighten a tiger. But he wasn’t happy. I could guess what had happened. Mr. Bateman thought the world of Selim, and he was always talking to him and putting his hand through the bars to stroke him and kidding himself that he could be tamed. I warned him time and again, but he wouldn’t listen. He loved animals, and he couldn’t believe they’d hurt him. And, as it happened, in all these years not one of them had. I think Selim may have seemed more friendly than usual and Mr. Bateman thought he’d chance it and go into the cage, and Selim misunderstood him and sprang. Mr. Bateman fell and fractured his skull on the cement floor of the cage, and after a bit Selim stopped worrying and tearing and got a notion in his dim brain that there was something wrong. That’s the way it looked to me anyhow. I made Jerry flash the light in his eyes while I opened the door and pulled the body out, but I didn’t really think he’d go for me. I went up to the house then and told the cook to break it to Mrs. Ramblett and Miss Helen while I telephoned to the police, and within half an hour they’d come along with the ambulance and taken him away.”
The next witness to be called was Gerald Courtney. The name was impressive, but its bearer turned out to be Jerry, the under keeper. His evidence corroborated that of Bowles in every particular.
“If it hadn’t been for old Curie and his bad finger it wouldn’t have happened, no, sir. I don’ reck to deal with no dead horses, and any other day Curie’d have gone along with Mr. Bowles and I’d have been in the gardens and maybe I could ha’ stopped poor Mr. Bateman from doin’ anything so plumb foolish as walk into that pesky tiger’s cage. But old Curie he’s deaf as a post and he don’t talk much, but he said to me only the day before, ‘The doctor paints this finger o’ mine with his stuff every time he comes and puts on a fresh bandage and it gets worse and worse. Half a mind to go to the hospital,’ he said. And when he went they kept him.”
“Yes,” said the coroner. “Blood poisoning. I hear he’s on the danger list. That will do, Courtney.
The police surgeon was the next witness. He had accompanied the ambulance to Sard Manor. He described the examination he had made of the body as it lay outside the cage and its terrible injuries.
“Did you make a post mortem of the organs?”
“No. It hardly seemed necessary. The cause of death was obvious.”
“H’m. Yes. I just wondered whether he had any alcohol at lunch. It sometimes induces over-confidence. I don’t want to bring any member of the Ramblett family here if I can avoid it. I understand that Mrs. Ramblett was seriously affected by the shock of this tragic occurrence. I will recall Thomas Bowles.”
Bowles was brought back, and this time it seemed to Collier, watching from the gallery, that he betrayed some reluctance.
“Was Mr. Bateman a heavy drinker?”
“Not him. Hardly drank anything at all.”
There were no more witnesses after the local police sergeant who described how he had been called to Sard Manor and had gone there with the doctor and a couple of men in the ambulance.
“There is just one point, Sergeant. The witness Bowles has told us that the animals were making a great deal of noise. How was it that the attention of the household was not attracted earlier?”
“That point occurred to me, sir. They don’t seem to have noticed anything. But the wind was in a direction that would carry the sound away in the opposite direction.”
“Thank you.”
The coroner summed up. There seemed no doubt that the unfortunate man had been attacked by the tiger as the result of his own foolhardiness in venturing alone and unarmed into the cage. The evidence of the keepers showed that he had been planning to do this, and was not to be dissuaded. No blame attached to anybody else. The police had examined the cage and considered it adequate, and there was nothing wrong with the fastenings of the door. The jury consulted together in whispers and the foreman rose. “We say death by misadventure.”
“I concur with that. And I shall not take upon myself to advise Mrs. Ramblett to have the tiger—no doubt a valuable animal—shot. The evidence of the keeper Bowles has shown that the poor beast can hardly be blamed for what occurred.”
There was a murmur of agreement from the jury.
The inquest was over.
Collier, lingering under the portico of the Town Hall, which was built in the pseudo-classic style of the eighteenth century, to light his pipe, saw Jerry, crossing the square, and followed him into the bar of the King’s Head.
Jerry ordered a double whisky. Collier asked for a bottle of tonic water.
“You’ve had a trying time,” he said sympathetically.
He felt genuinely sorry for Jerry. The big man looked grey with cold. He seemed as forlorn as a lost puppy as he fumbled for his change and stood staring at his glass as if he did not know what to do with it now he had it.
“Trying. You said it. Things keep happening. Losing my monkeys with lung trouble, and Master Oliver ill, and now this. Looks like a hoodoo to me. I’ll say it does. Way of the wind. But its gol darned queer all the same that nobody heard up at the house with all the animals raising hell the way they did. And everyone there was sighing and sobbing. They all loved Mr. Bateman. Sure. Barring the hyena, maybe. He wouldn’t care. And he was kind to me,” said Jerry sadly.
The barmaid tittered, “What, the hyena?”
“No, ma’am, Mr. Bateman.” He sighed and set down his glass, wiping his lips on his sleeve. “Got to be getting along.”
“Mrs. Ramblett won’t care to keep that tiger,” said Collier. “I’m in touch with some of the dealers, as it happens. I might be able to make her an offer. But I’d have to see him first. Can’t do much with an old animal, in poor condition.”
“You won’t see a finer tiger anywhere in a cage,” boasted Jerry. “In the jungle maybe. But I don’t know that she’ll want to sell.”
“No time like the present,” said Collier briskly. “I’ll come along with you, and if I like the look of him I can make her an offer.”
But Jerry shook his head decidedly.
“Not with me. We aren’t allowed to bring anyone in. Mrs. Ramblett don’t like strangers about the place. Nobody can’t stop you from coming, and maybe she’ll see you, but I hope you won’t mention that I got talking to you about the tiger. I don’t want to lose my job.”
“All right, I won’t,” said Collier easily, “and I may not come after all.”
He let Jerry get well away before he left.
Collier smiled at the barmaid. “Do you know this zoo place he works at?”
“My boy took me there last summer. Awkward place to get to. Over a mile from where the bus stops. But he took me on the pillion of his motor bike. We didn’t think much of it. Half the cages were empty. My boy and I kept on reading the labels over the pens, oryx something or other and all that, and throwing in gravel and scraping sticks along the bars to ginger the thing up, and lo and behold, there wasn’t anything there at all. You can take it from me it wasn’t worth the sixpence admission.”
“Too bad,” said Collier with a sympathy which, this time, was far from genuine.
Some other customers came in and he went out. He had decided that it might make a better impression if he drove up to Sard Manor in a taxi, and it would certainly save time. He had learned that the ’bus service was infrequent and he did not fancy a six mile walk in the rain. He engaged a taxi from the rank outside the station.
The driver stopped his car and turned in his seat to speak to his fare at the top of the avenue. The gate at the foot of the hill had been standing open.
“Can’t get no further.”
The road on the right leading over the crest of the hill was barred by a locked gate, a turnstile fastened with a chain and padlock and a kiosk with its windows closed. On the left the gate opening on a drive winding through dense shrubberies bore a notice No Admittance.
Collier got out of the taxi. “Wait for me here.”
“All right, guv’nor.”
The man Bowles emerged from a path at the back of the kiosk. He came towards them. His expression was distinctly unfriendly.
“What’s all this? Don’t you know this is private property? You left the public road half a mile back. There’s no thoroughfare this way.”
“I’ve come to see Mrs. Ramblett on business.”
“Mrs. Ramblett isn’t well. She don’t receive visitors.”
“I think she will see me.”
Bowles grunted. “I tell you she isn’t well enough. She’s got to be kept quiet. Doctor’s orders.”
“Miss Ramblett then.”
He took out his note case. Bowles eyed it thoughtfully. His tone changed slightly. “I got my orders. But you give me your card and a message and I’ll take a chance and tell her.”
The only cards Collier had with him were his own, and he did not want to reveal his identity. He slipped a ten shilling note into the keeper’s ready hand. “I haven’t got a card, and my name won’t convey anything to her. It’s Jarrow, Charles Jarrow. I thought of making an offer for that tiger.”
Bowles nodded. “You wait here. I’ll see.”
He went up through the shrubberies on the left beyond which Collier could see the corner of a roof and part of a chimney stack dark against the darkening sky. Rain dripped from the laurels. A long drawn howl added to the gloom. Bowles came back at the end of five minutes.
“Sorry, sir, but she won’t see you. I was to say they have no intention of selling the animal.”
“Well, if they won’t they won’t. I suppose I couldn’t have a peep at him.”
“I’m afraid not. It would be more than my place is worth. Mrs. Ramblett doesn’t like strangers. I’ll have to ask you to go now.”
