Buried for Pleasure (25 page)

‘Right-oh,' said Captain Watkyn agreeably.

Fen went to the police-station. But the Superintendent, he was told, had driven into Sanford Angelorum. Detective-Inspector Humbleby might possibly be at ‘The White Lion'.

Detective-Inspector Humbleby was at ‘The White Lion.' He sat alone in the bar, smoking a cheroot and drinking an atrocious decoction of sherry and draught beer. Fen waved his congratulations peremptorily aside and expounded his findings. And as he talked, Humbleby's normally amiable face grew hard and unforgiving.

‘You're perfectly right, of course,' he said at last. ‘And I ought to have been able to work it out for myself.'

‘You hadn't the advantage,' Fen pointed out, ‘of talking to Jane Persimmons.'

‘No, but I knew all about her, and that should have been enough.'

‘You can act now?'

‘Oh, certainly. The evidence is ample.'

‘What about a warrant?'

‘I can get that at once.'

They drove up to ‘The Fish Inn' at half past one exactly. The bar was already a ruin, its huge centre-beam extracted and propped perilously against an outside wall; but there was a small knot of people drinking on the lawn. Mr Judd was there, hovering about Jacqueline like a moth round a flame; Diana and Lord Sanford were there, shamelessly holding hands; Myra was there; Captain Watkyn was there; Wolfe was there. And Humbleby strode across to them, with Fen and a weighty police-constable in his wake. They looked at his face, and their greetings died in their throats. Humbleby said:

‘Edward Austin Wolfe, it is my duty to warn you that anything you say may be taken down and used in evidence hereafter. I now arrest you on a charge of murdering Detective-Inspector Charles Bussy by means of a knife at Sanford Angelorum on September 15, 1947.'

CHAPTER 21

O
F
what immediately followed, no lucid and reliable account is to be had. Fen's own subsequent statement, that he made a gallant and single-handed attempt to fell Wolfe, has been repudiated by other witnesses, who assert unanimously that he did not so much as move. Wolfe, however, did move; by the time Humbleby's pistol was out of his pocket he had dragged Jacqueline in front of him as a shield, and was backing away with her towards his car, which stood outside in the road. For a sufficient time the incident paralysed their common sense; though it might not be possible to shoot at Wolfe, there was still no objection to tackling him bodily; and yet by an irrational quirk of the mind they held back, feeling themselves powerless, until he was almost at the car. Humbleby was the first to regain the capacity for rational thought.

‘After him, damn you!' he shouted; and began running.

Urged on by Captain Watkyn, from a position well to the rear, the other men followed suit. But it was too late. Wolfe flung Jacqueline savagely aside and leaped into the car. It started at a touch and in another moment was away. Humbleby fired two shots at the tyres, but without effect.

‘I never was much good with these things,' he said resignedly. ‘Come on.'

He and Fen rushed for the car in which they had arrived. So also did the constable, but he was pushed out again with a bellowed injunction to send out a general alarm. The last Fen saw of the astonished group at the inn was Mr Judd solicitously but needlessly brushing Jacqueline's skirt with the palm of his hand; Fen decided that Jacqueline must be devoid of nerves, for she looked as pleasantly equable and unperturbed as ever.

Wolfe had not achieved a long start, and there seemed little chance of his eluding them. He turned up the road which led to the railway station, and beyond that to Sanford Condover; evidently he was not going to risk being stopped in Sanford Morvel. The Wythendale direction would probably have suited him best of all, but his car had been facing the wrong way, and turning it had of course been out of the question. They bucketed along, momentarily losing sight of their quarry behind the bends of that winding lane, but never, since there were no side turnings, in danger of losing him altogether. The scene of Fen's first encounter with the lunatic flashed past – and by this time it was abundantly clear to him that Humbleby's inefficiency with a pistol was surpassed only by his inefficiency in driving an automobile; the speed at which they were travelling no doubt involved some risk, but not, surely,
all this
risk; most of it derived unquestionably from the fact that Humbleby was of that order of drivers who, having put the wheel over, wait until they have entirely rounded a comer before beginning to move it back again.

‘Is there much point in our chasing him like this?' Fen demanded apprehensively. ‘He's almost certain to be picked up somewhere.'

‘This is a personal issue,' said Humbleby grimly. ‘He killed one of my colleagues, and I propose to do everything I possibly can towards ensuring that he's hanged.'

‘We'll both be dead if you go on driving like this.'

Humbleby was much astonished, but the off wheels of the car, lurching over a high grass verge, distracted his attention from whatever defensive reply he might have contemplated making. Fen sat back resignedly and thought about his sins.

Three images of Nemesis presided over Wolfe's eventual fate, and now the first of them confronted him. The abysmal Shooter, whose fallen tree lay half across the lane near the station, had chosen this afternoon to set about removing it. Horses were there to drag its roots from the hedge; a cart was there for its ultimate removal; Shooter and his sons were there, quarrelling lengthily about ways and means. At the moment when Wolfe's car arrived at the spot, their united efforts had so far shifted the tree as to cause it to block the lane not partially but entirely. There was no getting past it.

But by a delusive and temporary stroke of luck there was a gate into which it was possible for Wolfe to back his car. He turned, driving back, since no other course was open to him, in the direction whence he had come. Humbleby and Fen heard his approach – and since they were not yet in sight of Shooter and his barricade, it did not for an instant occur to them that it might be he. Humbleby squeezed the car in against the hedge. Fen sat bolt upright, histrionically invoking the protection of St Christopher. And Wolfe's car, rounding the bend ahead, scraped past them within two inches.

‘God damn and blast him to hell,' said Humbleby.

His turning, though by no means so rapid and efficient as Wolfe's, was somehow accomplished. The chase proceeded in a reverse direction, and the chattering, excited group outside ‘The Fish Inn' – swollen, now, by an admixture of villagers – stood suddenly petrified with amazement as the two cars came in view again. Fen caught a fleeting glimpse of their stupefaction as he was swept past; then, his gaze back on the road in front, he saw that Wolfe was turning into the lane which led up past the Rectory and so along the twelve miles to Wythendale.

Here it was that the second image of Nemesis awaited him. Along the exact centre of the lane, its head bandaged but its homing instinct unimpaired, trotted the non-doing pig, making resolutely for ‘The Fish Inn'. Wolfe saw it and – the training of a lifetime triumphing unexpectedly over his desperate lust of self-preservation – swerved to avoid it. So swerving, one of the front wheels of his car jarred against the grassy bank, and the engine died. The self-starter whined long and petulantly and unavailingly. As Fen and Humbleby drove up, Wolfe scrambled out of his car and, after glancing wildly about him, ran in at the Rectory gate.

They followed. The Rector, peaceably scrutinizing his flower-beds on the way out to Sunday-school, found himself without warning precipitated to the ground. Panic-stricken, Wolfe made for the front door, ran through it, slammed it behind him. A moment more, and Humbleby had scrambled in after him through an open downstairs window.

Fen paused to help the Rector to his feet, and in a few words informed him of what was going on. From within the house they heard vehement trampling, and a sudden shriek of dismay and fury from Mrs Flitch. To add to the confusion, the Rectory poltergeist, roused by these untoward happenings from its diurnal lethargy, came suddenly into action; objects began to fly out of the upstairs windows – pebbles, a comb, a box of
Nuits d'extase
, books, soap, a reproduction of the Sistine Madonna, a cushion, the detachable top of a small prie-dieu, a vase of flowers, a jade elephant, and a pair of white woollen bed-socks. The powder-box came open in mid-air and showered its contents on the Rector.

‘Stop it!' the Rector screamed in a sudden transport of rage. ‘Stop it, you bloody poltergeist!' But his unclerical admonition was without effect. The poltergeist not only continued to throw things, but set up a mournful wailing as well; though this, Fen thought, might be not implausibly ascribed to Mrs Flitch
in extremis
.

‘
Conjuro te!
' shrieked the Rector. ‘
Conjuro te, Satanas!
' He danced hysterically about, coated with powder and smelling like a perfumery.

The situation, Fen felt, was getting out of hand. And it was not greatly improved by the arrival of the crowd from the inn, who had heard the cars stop and had come pelting breathlessly round to see what was afoot. They poured into the Rectory garden, uttering dazed, irrelevant questions and skipping about in an attempt to avoid the poltergeist's uninterrupted stream of missiles. The dynamic level of the wailing rose abruptly from
mezzo-piano
to
fortissimo
.

‘
In nomine Patris et Filii
and all the rest of it,' bawled the Rector, convulsed, ‘
conjuro te
, do you hear me, damn you?'

This will not do, Fen told himself; it is my job to go inside and help Humbleby. But before he could move, someone in the crowd shouted: ‘Look!' and all eyes turned to the roof. Wolfe, dishevelled and sweating, was emerging from a skylight. And for whatever reason – whether because it had shot its bolt or because the Rector's exorcism had been successful – the poltergeist in this instant desisted: the howling and the showers of missiles ceased. And on the crowd below, perhaps in sympathy, a hush fell – until, like a shell from a cannon, Humbleby burst from the front door.

‘Lost him,' he shouted; and then, observing the direction of their gaze, ran to join them.

The Rectory roof was pseudo-Gothic – a strange agglomeration of peaks and towers, and gables and florid chimney-stacks; to move about it, though in some respects risky, was by no means impracticable. And Fen saw now what Wolfe was intending to do. To the left, as you stood facing the house, the high garden wall was overhung by the sturdy branch of an ancient oak which grew in the next demesne; and this branch reached almost to the guttering of the Rectory roof. A determined man, it was clear, would have no difficulty in getting from the roof on to the branch, and by that means across the wall. And Humbleby was not slow in perceiving this; after no more than a single glance he organized a party of volunteers and despatched them to mount guard at the foot of the oak.

‘Come down, Wolfe,' he shouted. ‘You can't get away.'

But Wolfe made no answer; it was, indeed, as if he had not heard. He continued to pick his way carefully across the leads, and in the afternoon sunlight they could see the rain of perspiration gleaming on his ruddy skin. With a short exclamation of impatience, Humbleby beckoned to the constable, and together they disappeared into the house.

And that was when Nemesis played its third and last card.

Wolfe was moving slowly along the very margin of the roof-along a narrow ledge between the lowest tiles and the gutter – when from behind a nearby chimney-stack a bizarre and striking figure emerged. It wore black suède shoes, cotton underpants, a Canadian lumber-jacket, and a rather small cricket-cap; it appeared to be eating a sandwich; and it stood champing its jaws and contemplating Wolfe's laborious progress with avuncular interest.

‘It's him,' said a voice at Fen's elbow; and the crowd muttered recognition. Turning, Fen saw that Myra was beside him, the non-doing pig crouched in untarnished fidelity at her feet. ‘It's the lunatic,' she said, breathless with excitement.

Fen agreed that it was.

‘And just think, my dear, he must have been camping there on the roof ever since he escaped. No wonder they didn't find him.'

Fen concurred. ‘But the question now,' he said, ‘is what he's going to do about Wolfe.'

That was, indeed!, the question. Wolfe had at last perceived the lunatic, and was standing stock-still. The lunatic examined him thoughtfully and then nodded with great affability. Wolfe nodded back – and his relief was clearly perceptible to those who stood below. He resumed his progress. He came opposite to where, non-chalantly leaning against the chimney-stack, Elphinstone stood. On all the watchers there fell a sudden, inexplicable silence.

Then it happened.

Elphinstone lurched forward; from his mouth issued, with foghorn stridency, the sound ‘Boo!'. Opinions differ as to whether he actually intended to attack Wolfe, and the matter is not now susceptible of investigation. But the effect of his unexpected pounce on the raw nerves of the fugitive was decisive. Wolfe's left foot slipped on the gutter; with a crack like a gunshot it gave way beneath his weight; he staggered, swayed, his hands clutched at vacancy. With a feeble, high-pitched cry he fell.

The crowd sighed, with the hollow reverberation of many indrawn breaths. Faintly, a woman screamed, and then again there was silence. Fen strode to where Wolfe lay, bent over him, and then stripped off his own jacket and laid it on the vacant, unseeing face.

‘His neck's broken,' he announced briefly. ‘There's nothing that can be done for him.'

Humbleby and the constable had appeared through the skylight just in time to witness the accident. Their original mission abolished, they devoted their energies to persuading Elphinstone to descend. He consented to this with such readiness as to make their cajolings superfluous, and the constable and a farm labourer were deputed to restore him to Dr Boysenberry's care. As they passed through the lingering, bemused crowd Fen heard him say: