Such Is Death (10 page)

“One last answer. No. Now you have a drink with me.”

When Emma Rafter had gone Carolus went across to the counter where Doris and Vivienne were unoccupied for a few moments.

“The first rush is over,” explained Doris. “We usually get them in soon after we open till now, when it Goes Quiet. Then we're busy around nine. Did you find out what you wanted?”

“Yes,” said Carolus.

“She's a scream, really, isn't she? But not a bad sort when you get to know her.”

Carolus, who was sure about neither of these, nodded.

“I wish you could remember whether she was here at the same time as the man who was murdered that night.”

“It's no good my making it up,” said Doris, “and I can't be sure either way. I know she was in Early On that night and so was he, but whether it was the same time or not I can't say. Did you notice, Vivienne?”

“What was that?” asked Vivienne.

“Whether that fellow with the staring eyes was here at the same time as Miss Rafter that night?”

“I couldn't say, I'm sure,” replied Vivienne from far away.

“Only Mr Deene wants to know. He's trying to find out about the murder. I tell him I can't be sure. It must have been about the same time, mustn't it?”

“Mmmm,” said Vivienne without interest.

“I could ask Mr Lobbin when he comes in. He might have noticed. He was here all that evening as I told you.”

“No. Don't do that,” said Carolus. “I'll be having a chat with him later and can ask him myself. But I'd like to know which he is, if he comes in.”

“Oh he'll be in all right. He's usually in before this. It's the only bit of peace he gets all day to come in here. She's on at him like I don't know what from the time he gets up in the morning. Such a nice fellow, too. Wouldn't hurt a fly. Still, they're the ones that marry them, aren't they?”

“Are you married?” asked Carolus.

“Me? Gracious no. You won't catch me marrying anyone. No thank you. Vivienne is, though, aren't you, Vivienne?”

“Mmmm,” said Vivienne without enthusiasm.

“Is there anyone else you want pointing out to you? “Doris asked Carolus.

“Do you ever get a man called Bodger in here?”

Doris smiled.

“Hear that, Vivienne? No, we don't. He used to come in a lot until a few months ago but we don't have him in here now. Well, I told Mr Rugley I wouldn't serve him again. Mr Rugley was quite all right about it. ‘I don't blame you', he said. Well, I mean to say.”

“What did he do?”

“It wasn't so much what he did but the things he said. I told him, that last time he was in; ‘Don't you come in here again, I said, else you won't be served'. He's really a terrible old man. You should have heard
the way he spoke to Vivienne, didn't he, Vivienne?”

“Mmmm,” admitted Vivienne.

“Ever so rude, he was. I should have liked Vivienne's husband to have heard him, that's all. But then he's like that with everyone, I believe. I know they won't have him in the Chequers now.”

“I believe he lost his only son in the war.”

“That's no excuse,” said Doris with unaccustomed severity. “There's lots did that and still know how to keep a civil tongue in their head. Besides it's a good many years ago now.”

“Still,” said Vivienne melodiously, “they say that's what turned him.”

“I don't know what turned him, I'm sure. Someone did tell me he thought the world of his boy and the two was always together in his boat and that. But I can't see why we have to put up with his language all these years later. So long as he doesn't come in here.”

Carolus invited them to have a drink.

“Mmmm,” said Vivienne, adding graciously, “I don't mind. Plain gin.”

“Well, that's very kind of you,” said Doris cheerfully. “I'll have a small gin and french same as I always do. Scotch for you? Yes, that old Bodger. He'll get into trouble one of these days.”

“I hear he has been in trouble.”

“Oh, that. I meant the way he speaks to anyone.” Suddenly she leaned across to Carolus. “This is Mr Lobbin coming in now,” she whispered. “Yes, it is a cold night,” she added loudly to Carolus. Then to the newcomer, “Good evening Mr Lobbin. Cold out?”

“It
is
cold,” said Lobbin.

Carolus studied him. He was six foot tall or a little more and his face had a rough untidy look about it, a wayward moustache, disorderly eyebrows and irregular features. His eyes had a hurt, wondering expression and his hands were large and powerful. Yes, Carolus could well believe he was nagged by his wife, though there might be a dangerous limit somewhere to his patience.

Carolus decided not to speak to him this evening or until he had made more progress with Rafter's own family. But he watched him go at once into an intimate conference with Doris which lasted several minutes before it was broken up by Doris's loud, “So that was it? Well, I'm not surprised really.”

Lobbin was, Carolus grudgingly supposed, the nearest he had so far to a ‘suspect', yet on the face of it he could not take the supposition very seriously. True, Lobbin had known Ernest on the Burma Road, knew of his treachery and had perhaps suffered from it. True, he had seen him in this bar on the night of the murder, as Doris said ‘could scarcely take his eyes off him' and so probably recognized him. True he was on the promenade shortly before the murder. But to argue from these that he had gone down there, found Rafter and murdered him, seemed to Carolus far-fetched. Besides, what about the coal-hammer? Did he customarily walk about with a coal-hammer concealed on his person in case he should meet a man who had behaved badly as a fellow-prisoner of war nearly twenty years earlier? There had not been much time, one would think, between Lobbin's leaving the Queen Victoria at ten o'clock and his being seen near the Palatine Cinema also at ‘about ten o'clock'. At all events there had scarcely been time for him to walk to his home, provide himself with the coal-hammer, and reach the promenade.

The more Carolus thought about it, the more it seemed to him that all his vague suppositions were misdirected. The Rafter family, the people recognized by the policeman on the promenade, were all he had at present to consider as suspects but he could not make himself take their so-called motive seriously.

When a few minutes later a man and woman entered the bar, whom he recognized at once from Moore's description as Mr and Mrs Bullamy, he felt even more that he was among improbabilities. Mr Bullamy was a jolly little man and his wife looked like a female impersonator. Mr Bullamy made a joke with Doris and his wife laughed
whole-heartedly at it. They both drank Guinness and seemed to enjoy it. What in the world could there be to connect such a commonplace couple with a brutal and cowardly crime except that by chance they had walked along the promenade on a night which was, admittedly, one of blustering wind, shortly before a man was murdered there?

He noticed, however, that they greeted Lobbin at once and the three sat down together. Mr Bullamy ceased to joke and chuckle and listened gravely to something Lobbin was explaining. Mrs Bullamy became rather tense. But then, Carolus reflected, they had all three recently been questioned by the police and had in common the anxiety and disquiet which such questioning might rouse in even the most innocent persons.

On the whole he felt he had done enough for today. Tomorrow he would start from quite a different angle and leave both the family and this pub for a time while he saw one or two even less involved people whose names had been connected with the thing. But he knew he was floundering about in the dark.

N
EXT
morning Carolus went by appointment to call on the Reverend Theo Morsell at the Vicarage of St Giles's. He found this to be a stucco villa on the outskirts of the town.

Mr Morsell was a vigorous-looking man in his early forties whose hair was thinning fast and whose eyes had a hungry look, as though they were spying out occasions for exercising his bounding energies. He had an embarrassingly warm and boisterous manner, called Carolus ‘old man' or ‘old chap' and seemed accustomed to being popular, uncontradicted and admired.

It very soon became apparent that, so far from thinking that Carolus had approached him as someone who might
be considered a suspect, he assumed that he was being consulted for his sagacity and experience.

“I'm a bit of a sleuth myself,” he said in a hearty way as he lit a large pipe. “Always interested in this sort of problem. In my job I have to know something about human nature at its best and sometimes at its worst. So I've made a bit of a study of crime and criminals. It has enabled me to lend a hand here and there, too. I'm delighted to say that at least five of my regular congregation have done time and two of my choir are ex-Borstal boys. Grand fellows, all of them. Grand. So I'm not exactly a novice. May be able to help you quite a bit, old man. You tell me where you've got to and I'll see whether light breaks.”

Carolus inwardly squirmed but remained civil and businesslike.

“I've got to that night on the promenade,” he said, “and I understand that you …”

“Ah, that night,” said Mr Morsell. “Now the first thing we should notice about it was that there was a blustering cold wind. Not at all a night on which people would be walking up and down the promenade by chance.”

“Yet you …”

“The second thing was the
time.
Just after closing-time, you notice. Just when anyone who wanted to cool his head might take a blow.”

“Is that why you …”

“But the key to the whole thing as I see it is the coal-hammer. If we could find where that coal-hammer came from, we should be well on the way to the murderer.”

“Obvi …”

“Unless he'd been clever enough to steal it to involve someone else. If I were you I should go all out on discovering a home from which a coal-hammer is missing. The police should go about it systematically and try every door in Selby. Someone must have noticed it by now. If you hear of one missing it would narrow down your suspects to those who have had a chance to steal it, wouldn't it?”

Carolus gave up, for the moment, any attempt to ask relevant questions.

“You think it was pre-planned, then?”

“My dear old chap, of course it was. And with a cunning given to few. The murderer was no sadist, but someone with a very good reason for wishing this man dead. If he had been a paranoiac there would have been an element of sexual perversity in the crime, whereas it was a shrewd and clever thing, a triumph of mind over matter which he thought would remain immune from discovery.”

“What was the motive, then?” asked Carolus.

Mr Morsell shrugged.

“Revenge,” he suggested, greed, fear, pride, it could have been any of the usual motives. No power on earth would make me believe there was not a valid reason. There was too much logic and skilled reasoning in the affair.”

“That almost means you suspect one of the family.”

“My dear man, I suspect no one yet. I am much too old a hand at this sort of thing to fix on anyone. All I can say is, this looks to me like a cold-blooded affair and not the act of a sadist or exhibitionist. So a motive has got to be found. That's where you come in, you field detectives, accustomed to dealing with these things in a practical way.”

Carolus made a resolute attempt to put his first question.

“I understand you were on the promenade that evening.”

“I was indeed,” said Mr Morsell. “But unfortunately I saw nothing which could be at all helpful to you. A pity, because my powers of observation are unusually keen and if there had been some little incident or encounter which would give you any scope for enquiry I should have noted it in detail. But there wasn't.”

“Perhaps you will let me decide that,” said Carolus, driven towards exasperation at last. “What time did you go down to the promenade?”

“My dear old boy, I'm hopeless at remembering times.
As my wife will tell you, she has to remind me of every appointment. It's a congenital weakness of mine. But I should guess that in this case we left here soon after nine o'clock. We dine about eight. When I say ‘dine' I mean we have our evening snack. That night we sat for some time over it before deciding to face the elements. I may say we didn't realize, quite, what a disagreeable night it was. The wind must have come up in the late afternoon. Yes, we can call it nine o'clock, or soon after.”

“How long were you down there?”

“There again, you've come to the wrong shop for detail. We drove down from here, parked the car by the pier and set off with that wind in our faces. I should think we walked for about fifteen minutes before turning round.”

“How far did you get?”

“Not unfortunately, as far as the last shelter or we might have seen something useful. But I can tell you the point we reached to an inch. We went as far as the public lavatory. I know that because I intended to make use of it but found it closed.”

“So what did you do?”

“My dear old chap, I don't know whether you suffer from a weak bladder. If you do you will guess what I did—got over the railing and dropped on to the beach for a moment out of the light.”

“So your wife was waiting alone on the promenade? Did anyone pass her?”

“You must ask her that for yourself. She'll be bringing us in a cup of coffee in a moment. We always indulge ourselves at eleven o'clock in the morning. You'll join us, I hope? I know how exhausting this kind of teaser can be.”

“Thank you. So that was as far as you went?”

“Yes. Pity, isn't it? If we had covered the next hundred yards or two it would have brought us to the last shelter, and then who knows what my observant eye might have seen?”

“Who indeed? The man was being murdered about
the time you were on the beach,” said Carolus, but again apparently failed to suggest to Mr Morsell that this was anything but a consultation with a fellow expert.