Jack on the Gallows Tree (2 page)

He found his Senior History Master sitting up in bed reading Lucas's
Forensic Chemistry and Scientific Criminal Investigation.

Carolus Deene was in his early forties. He had been a good all-round athlete with a half blue for boxing and a fine record in athletics. During the war he did violent things, always with a certain elegance for which he was famous. He jumped out of aeroplanes with a parachute and actually killed a couple of men with his Commando knife which, he supposed ingenuously, had been issued to him for that purpose.

He was slim, dapper, rather pale and he dressed too well for a schoolmaster. He was not a good disciplinarian as the headmaster understood the word because he simply could not be bothered with discipline, being far too interested in his subject. If there were stupid boys who did not feel this interest and preferred to sit at the back of his class and eat revolting sweets he let them, continuing to talk to the few
who listened. He was popular, but considered a little odd. His dressiness and passionate interest in both history and crime were his best-known characteristics in the school, though among the staff his large private income was a matter for some invidious comment.

“Ah, Deene,” said Mr Gorringer, “making good progress, I see.”

“Yes thanks, headmaster. Do find a seat.”

“I notice you are doing a little light reading.”

“Yes. It's not bad,” said Carolus. “Sorry I shan't be able to do my stuff with the exams.”

“Truly a pity. But jaundice is jaundice. I hear that Dr Thomas is recommending you to go away for a period of complete rest.”

“Sounds as though I'd had a nervous breakdown. Yes, Tom did say he thought I ought to have a change of air.”

“Where did you think of going?” asked Mr Gorringer, keeping his voice as casual as possible.

“It doesn't seem to matter. Doctors have given up pretending that one resort is better than another, I gather.”

“He did not recommend any particular spa for you?”

“He said something about Buddington-on-the-Hill, I believe. But it sounded deathly dull.”

“An excellent choice, my dear Deene. A splendid little place. It would build you up in no time, I feel sure.”

“I don't really mind. Tom says there's a reasonably good hotel there.”

“I rejoice to hear it. You will no doubt make reservations there forthwith?”

“I suppose so.”

Mr Gorringer wished him a quick recovery and left with a lighter heart. When, four days later, he heard that the school doctor had himself driven Carolus to Buddington and returned to say that he was comfortably settled at the Royal Hydro, and would remain there for at least three
weeks, the headmaster could read of the deepening mystery at Torquay, the police baffled at Bournemouth, the surprising developments at Scarborough without losing his large appetite.

On the Saturday after the departure of Carolus he decided to take his History Master's place and conduct a lesson with the Lower Sixth, a difficult class dominated by that odiously sophisticated boy, Rupert Priggley. Mr Gorringer found that Carolus had left the class deep in the affairs of the fourteenth century.

For the headmaster history was firmly divided into ‘reigns' and he tackled that of Richard II with a will. He found the class curiously attentive as he ran through Richard's wily tactics, his sudden arresting of his opponents and finally his own deposition.

“Parliament ordered that Richard should be imprisoned,” pronounced Mr Gorringer sonorously as he secretly wondered how this class had gained a reputation for unruliness. “He was privily removed from the Tower of London and sent to Pontefract Castle. He lived through most of the winter, but in February he died.” Mr Gorringer paused to prepare his final peroration.

A boy named Simmons, a studious and bespectacled youth, devoted to study, the headmaster believed, asked a question.

“What did he die of, sir?”

It was innocently spoken.

“History does not record …” began Mr Gorringer.

“Wasn't he starved to death, sir?”

“Wasn't it straight murder, sir?”

“Why was his corpse never shown to the people as Parliament ordered, sir?”

“What exactly was the mystery, sir?”

Mr Gorringer looked about him, realizing too late the guile of the innocent-looking Simmons.

“It does not seem to be a point of much historical
interest,” he said airily. “Privation of one sort or another, no doubt.”

“Murder, then?” suggested Priggley.

“Murder, mayhap, neglect, discomfort, illness, starvation. Who is to say?” asked the headmaster rhetorically.

“Mr Deene, if he were here,” retorted Priggley. “It would be just his cup of tea. He'd probably run down to Pontefract looking for clues.”

“That will do, Priggley. We will now …”

“You must own it's most unsatisfactory, sir. Here's a king just petering out, as it were. One should know at least whether he was assassinated.”

“When your History Master returns to his duties you will no doubt be able to inveigle him into speculation on that wholly irrelevant point …”

“It wouldn't be irrelevant to him, sir. It would be
the
point. Who did it. How. Why. When. Where. Right up his street.”

“Silence, sir!” said Mr Gorringer in an intimidating voice. “Let us now consider the character of this sovereign and its effect on contemporary events …”

The lesson went on without further interruption and Mr Gorringer was able to dismiss the class with good-humour.

As he was walking home half an hour later he found Priggley in wait for him. In the boy's hand was a copy of the evening paper.

“Seen this, sir?”

Mr Gorringer took the paper and began to scan its headlines. Scarborough. Bournemouth. Torquay. He could look at news items now without dismay.

“By the way, Priggley,” he said as his eyes roved. “I have to speak to you on a most serious matter. It has come to my ears that you have …” His voice died away and Rupert Priggley was gratified to see his mouth fall open and his eyes goggle.

“Confound it!” cried the headmaster. It was the nearest
to an oath that he allowed himself to go in the presence of a pupil.

“Pretty little paragraph, isn't it, sir?”

Words failed Mr Gorringer.

“It's … it's …” he said and stood staring at the newspaper.

“Rather Mr Deene's tea, don't you think, sir?”

Double Murder at Buddington,
Mr Gorringer read.
Two Elderly Ladies Found Strangled.

He perused the details which Priggley had already seen. Two women, believed to be unacquainted with one another, had been murdered during a single night in or near the town of Buddington-on-the-Hill. The body of a spinster, Miss Sophia Carew, had been discovered some four miles from the town, while that of Mrs Westmacott, a widow with several surviving children, was lying in a sitting-room of her house, Rossetti Lodge. Death had been caused in each case by strangulation.

“This,” said Mr Gorringer at last, “this is terrible.”

Rupert Priggley, who did not for a moment suppose that he was referring to the violence of the two poor women's death, said quietly, “I was afraid you wouldn't like it, sir.”

T
HE
mineral springs of Buddington were known to the Romans, and excavations have shown a complicated water system and brought to light the remains of a lead-lined bath and certain mosaics. In the eighteenth century one of the Georges took to coming here, and though it never rivalled
Bath or Tunbridge Wells as a spa, it had its vogue and shows traces of it in its architecture.

Today it is famous for its population of rich and aged invalids and the fact that here, alone in all England, the bath-chair survives as more than a relic. On any fine morning you may see on the wide pavements of the street called the Promenade an almost continuous procession of these man-drawn vehicles, which are hired and pulled by their owners at the standard rate of thirty shillings an hour.

Though the town stands high, it is very much on a level, which makes the work of the bathchair-men easier and enables their patrons to be drawn not only to the famous Pump Room but less hygienically to the Olde Creamerie, where at eleven o'clock in the morning they may be seen swallowing milky coffee and devouring sugared and sickly cakes.

The Royal Hydro Hotel was not, unhappily, built to accommodate the royal visitors of the eighteenth century, but looks rather as though its architect hoped Prince Albert might decide to stay there. Seeing it on a rise above the town, one remembers the Crystal Palace before its destruction, the Albert Hall, St Pancras Station, the Law Courts in the Strand, even the Victoria and Albert Museum. Its horrors are manifold and include the huge conservatory on the side of the building which is full of misplaced tropical verdure.

Carolus arrived feeling thoroughly exhausted by the journey and scarcely glanced about him as he stood in the towering entrance hall among giant pilasters and gilt stucco. He found his room had a rich and stuffy atmosphere in spite of its height; curtains, carpets, bedding, upholstery, cushions—everything was heavy, plushy and expensive. However, he had given instructions that he was not to be disturbed, so he climbed into the bed, which was too soft and clinging, and slept till the morning.

His ring then was answered by a spruce young waiter
whose appearance bore the stamp of the Royal Air Force, but who talked like someone learning to broadcast.

He arranged Carolus's breakfast on a table and handed him a couple of newspapers.

“I thought you'd probably want
The Times,”
he said, “but I've brought the local daily as well. There's something in it which may interest you.”

“Really?”

“Yes. Rather an unusual double murder. I believe that's your line of country.”

“I've come here for a rest,” said Carolus feebly.

“I know. But you may as well read it. Anything else you want?”

Carolus shook his head rather listlessly and watched the young waiter depart. He felt painfully devitalized, and while trying to eat his breakfast ignored both newspapers.

But that could not last. At first warily then with avidity he read in the
Buddington Courier
all that could be published of the case, and though he made a feeble effort in the days that followed to avoid it in conversation, he was soon absorbed in its details. Before the first two days of his supposed convalescence were over he had become conversant with the outline of the case, largely through the information of the young waiter, who had been born in Buddington and seemed to know all about the town.

Carolus found the story anomalous, bizarre and rather horrifying. Story? Or stories? That was, he decided from the first, the very heart of the matter. The two deaths must certainly be connected, but by what? It could not be by some fantastic coincidence that there had taken place in the same night and in the same town. But were they the acts of a single person? Or two persons acting in concert? Or independently? These questions came before all else.

The first victim, Sophia Carew, was sixty-three, a brisk and active woman who had been living for some years as a
paying guest in the home of a certain Colonel Baxeter and his wife. Herself of a military family, she had inherited an ample fortune and had spent many years in studying the Tuaregs, the Veiled People of the Sahara, about whom she had written a useful book called
Agades and the Veil.
She was no Gertrude Bell or even Freya Stark, but she had made a niche for herself, had been satisfied with her one book and had not tired everyone with unnecessary and artificially compounded sequels. She was tall, grey-haired, and stringy in appearance with a much-lined somewhat masculine face. She was a kind and friendly woman, beloved of her friends but with very few local acquaintances. She drove her own car and was rarely seen in the town.

She had come to Buddington, it seemed, because her only living relative resided there. Charlie Carew was her nephew, a man of forty whose cheerful thriftlessness and undergraduate alcoholism had been all very well when he was young but became rather tiresome now that he had got through most of his share of the family money and lived mysteriously, calling himself an insurance agent. He was a familiar figure in the saloon bars of the town, a good mixer, an inveterate hob-nobber, prone to narrative and the discussion of cricket scores. His wife had left him and he had few close friends, but was on mutual boring terms with most of the town.

On the Thursday of the murders Miss Carew had been up to town and reached Dehra Dun, Colonel Baxeter's house, at about six. She had joined her host and his wife in their customary cocktail and shared their evening meal at seven. She had gone out in her car afterwards, which was in no way unusual, for she was addicted both to the cinema and the local repertory theatre and shared the Colonel's detestation of television. It was not discovered until the morning that she had not slept in the house, for the Baxeters went to bed before ten and she had her latch-key. Mrs Baxeter went to her room with a cup of a beverage called Vita-Tea—again
according to custom—and found the bed unslept-in.

Even that did not unduly alarm the Baxeters, for Miss Carew was a strong-minded and independent woman who frequently did things on impulse. The Baxeters discussed the matter at breakfast and decided that the police should be informed, but without any panic. They expected a telephone call from Miss Carew all that morning, supposing that she had suddenly decided to return to town or something of the sort. She had never done such a thing before, they said, but they were not seriously perturbed.

Colonel Baxeter decided to call in person at the police station and report the matter, for he felt that Miss Carew might resent his raising an alarm over her movements. He wanted to explain the details and ask the police to use tact in their enquiries. However, before he left the house the Detective Inspector in charge called to give him the sad news that the body had been found.