Death at Hallows End (16 page)

I kept away from the bungalow on the Tuesday, though I heard Grossiter was dead. On Wednesday morning I decided to go over there and ask to see my grandfather before he was put in his coffin. It seemed the least I could do because whether or not he had done anything for me, he had intended to, and I was grateful for that.

Darkin opened the door and I told him what I wanted. He was not actually rude, but took a very superior attitude. He would see, he said, and closed the door on me.

Presently Holroyd came out. He had that smile of his on his face but he did not look friendly.

“You realise, don't you, that your intrusion on my uncle the day before yesterday may have brought on his last fatal heart attack?”

I said I realised nothing of the sort. As a relation I demanded to see the body.

“I have no right to exclude you from that, though if you had the least respect for him I think you would keep away. However, I shall not judge you. It is not convenient for you to come in now, but the undertaker is not coming until this afternoon. If you come here at about twelve o'clock you will be admitted to the room for a moment or two.”

He then shut the door on me. I went back at noon and was duly shown my grandfather's body. He looked quite peaceful. There was only one thing I thought rather odd about him. He had shaved his moustache—or it had been shaved off after his death. This seemed to improve him, and in death he looked a kindly and benign person rather than the irritable old gentleman I had known.

I did not go to the cremation. Zelia couldn't come down to take me and I had no car. Nothing else happened worth recording, in fact, until last night—the night of Saturday, September 25 th.

It was to be my last night in Hallows End. Zelia was coming down very early today, Sunday, to take me back to New-minster in time for lunch so that I could return to work on Monday morning. I went up to my room at about ten o'clock and sat working at some law books I had brought with me, for
rather more than an hour, I think. Then I went to bed and slept for some time—I don't know how long.

I woke suddenly. I do not know what woke me—some noise or light, I supposed. I sat up in bed, fully awake and alert, listening. I could hear nothing, yet I was convinced that there was something to hear. I can't explain this; I can only say that the silence did not seem natural. I decided to dress and go out.

From the window I saw that a heavy mist hung over the churchyard, almost a fog. I stood there without turning on the light for some minutes, then I thought I heard, distantly through the mist, the sound of digging. It was an eerie sound to hear from a churchyard in the thick darkness of the night.

I dressed in the darkness and very cautiously opened my door. There was another sound audible in the passage, the regular snoring breath of Mrs. Rudd in her room next door to mine. I started to creep downstairs with my shoes in my hand. I reached the front door and very slowly and quietly began to unbar it. I could hear Mrs. Rudd continuing undisturbed above me. I thought I would be able to get out without disturbing her, but just as I was closing it the front door seemed to swing to of its own accord. I had forgotten it had this habit. It seemed to make a loud bang in that silence and I remained where I was, quite motionless and hidden in the porch, for some minutes to see whether Mrs. Rudd would wake and come down. There was not a sound from the cottage, so I concluded she had failed to wake.

I put on my shoes and made for the front gate, then came round to the entrance to the churchyard. I stopped here and listened again. Now I was sure of it—a sound of digging almost as steady and regular as Mrs. Rudd's snores.

But no light was to be seen anywhere. That was the uncanny part. Two men, I thought by the double spade movements,
were digging away somewhere in the churchyard in complete darkness.

Very cautiously, I opened the lych gate and began advancing towards the point from which I thought the sound was coming. As I did so I realised that this was the place where old Harold Rudd had been buried a week ago.

At first I had the absurd idea that this was something to do with the memorial stone which was to go over his grave. I soon dismissed that. Memorial masons don't deliver their handiwork at midnight and work to set it up without a light. Then what was it? I took a step forward, then suddenly felt a blinding blow on the back of the head. Or did I feel it? I scarcely know if you could call it feeling because it knocked me completely out. Yet somehow in the second before I lost consciousness I knew that this had come from behind me.

The next thing I knew was that I was lying in excruciating pain and deathly cold on a gravel path in the churchyard with the first streaks of dawn above me. I tried to move, but it was a long time before I could do so. Then I staggered across to the cottage and upstairs, knocking on Mrs. Rudd's door.

She at once called Dr. Jayboard. When he came he cleaned and bound up a wound on the back of my head without asking any questions. Then he enquired how it happened. Some instinct told me not to tell him the truth and I made up a story about coming home after a drink and slipping to crack my head on a gravestone. He seemed to accept this and told me I had had a lucky escape. There was no sign of concussion, he said, and except for a severe headache which I still have, I rapidly began to feel better.

At eight o'clock, while I was having my breakfast, Holroyd Neast came to the cottage and asked to see me. “I hear you've had a nasty accident,” he said. “How did it happen?”

I told him I had gone out the night before and must have slipped and cracked my head, for I remembered nothing till I came to in the churchyard. He said he was very sorry and asked if there was anything I wanted. He sounded friendly and I thanked him.

When Zelia arrived soon after, I told her what had happened and she suggested that as soon as we reached her home I should dictate to her the whole story so that I could make a businesslike report. It was she who realised that what I knew might be important in the matter of Humby's disappearance. So I agreed to do as she asked.

By nine o'clock I felt well enough to return to Newminster with Zelia and it was on the way up that we decided to bring this report to you as you would know best what to do about it. So here it is. If you think the police should have it, please take it to them. To the best of my knowledge and belief it is strictly true in every detail.

A
S
C
AROLUS REACHED THE
end of Spaull's statement, he looked at his watch. It was 4:35. He stuffed the sheets into his pocket and without waiting to tell Mrs. Stick he was going out, slammed the front door after him. He was out of the town on the road that he had come to know well by which he would reach Hallows End in a little less than an hour and a half of fast driving.

He was engaged in a race—not directly with any human force, but with light. Something had to be done by natural light before the late September evening closed down too far. This was his instant reaction to his reading of Spaull's story.

He passed the Falstaff Hotel at a little before six o'clock, and slowed down for the winding road to Hallows End. He turned down Church Lane and stopped at the tiny cottage of the gnome-like Puckett. He had already been forced to use his car lights and knew that there was barely time for his purpose. Yet he knew that it would be impossible to hurry Puckett over his divinations without antagonising him. When Puckett opened the door, Carolus appeared to be breathless with the urgency of the moment.

“Oh, Mr. Puckett,” he said. “Could you possibly come with me for a few moments? It's rather urgent.”

“What's rather urgent?”

“I want to show you something before the light goes.”

“Show
me
something? I don't know what you want to show me. There was a naxident up there last night.”

“I know. It is as a result of that…”

“Something to do with those Neasts. Must be. Though it wasn't their car that went up and down the road last night, that I do know.”

“Mr. Puckett…”

“I don't know why you come to me. I don't know anything about it all. Where do you want to go?”

“I'll tell you that as we go along.”

“Yes, but go along where? Is it a long way?”

“No. No. You'll be back here in fifteen minutes.”

“Not going for a long drive, then?”

“No.”

“Because I've often wanted to take a ride in a car like that one of yours.”

“Afterwards, if you like. If you'll come now, straightaway.”

“Oh, I don't say this evening. One of these days I'd like to, though. I'd like to get back soon if I'm coming with you. In fact, you better leave me up at the church afterwards. It'll be time for Evening Service. There's not many comes nowadays but I have to be there.”

“I'm afraid it will be too late if we don't go soon.”

“Too late for Service? I don't see how it can be. Fifteen minutes, you said, and Service doesn't start till six-thirty.”

“I'll certainly leave you at the church, only could you come now?”

“I've got to get my coat on, haven't I? Can't go traipsing about the place like I am now. Wait a minute, then, and I'll get ready.”

Puckett's preparations did not take long. He was wordy but not slow-moving.

In the car Carolus hurriedly explained.

“I want you to come and look at Harold Rudd's grave. I rather think it may have been disturbed.”

This seemed to shock Puckett into a silence from which he had not recovered when they reached the lych gate. Puckett almost jumped from the car and led the way across the churchyard to an earthy mound over which nothing had yet grown. This he began to examine from all angles, squinting and moving about like a terrier.

“I don't know whether Rudd's been disturbed or not,” he said at last. “But this grave is not how I left it.”

“You mean?”

“I couldn't say whether it's all been dug up right down to the coffin, but someone's had some of it off the top and put it back again, that's certain. Look at all this clay over the grass here. I should never have left that, and besides it has rained heavy since we buried Rudd to wash that all away if I had of done.”

“You're sure someone has been digging here, then?”

“Of course I'm sure. I've got to go over to the church now, but I'll tell you what I mean later if you like to wait till after Service. If there's only him and me the Rector won't go through with it, not Evening Service that is, though if it was what he calls Marss in the morning there's nothing would stop him. So I may be free as soon as I've put the lights out or I may be half an hour or so, because we can't have hymns if there's only two or three of us, can we?”

Carolus waited for a few minutes before driving away, but when he saw a station wagon draw up, and five people leave it to enter the church, he knew that Puckett would be occupied for at least thirty minutes. The five — three men and two women—Carolus had not seen before and he wondered vaguely who they might be. But he passed several more pedestrians,
apparently bound for the church, as he drove towards the village. The Rector would have quite a congregation this evening.

He parked his car in the village square and, finding the telephone booth there empty, went in and after some delay got through to Snow's home. The Detective Sergeant did not sound in the least peeved at being disturbed on a Sunday evening and greeted Carolus amicably.

Carolus came at once to the point.

“Do you think you could get an exhumation order for Harold Rudd's grave?” he asked.

“Rudd? That's the man who was buried on the Saturday before Humby's disappearance, isn't it? But he died in hospital.”

“Yes, I know. But I've reason to think his grave was disturbed last night. Young Spaull…”

“We know all about him now.”

“Yes. He has made a long written statement to me. I shall of course hand it to you at once. I told him he should have reported to you. This gave me reason to think that Rudd's grave had been interfered with and since then I've confirmed it.”

“I shall have to find out the legal position, Mr. Deene. It may be more difficult than one would suppose. We can have no reason connected with Rudd himself for exhuming.”

“I leave that to you. I'm sure you can manage it. When you hear everything from me I think you'll see it's necessary.”

“When will that be, Mr, Deene?”

“I am staying down here tonight.”

“Tomorrow morning, then. I'll make this application and come straight down. You'll stay at the Falstaff, I suppose.”

When Carolus returned to the church the service was over, but by the light in the church porch he saw the Rector with Puckett. The Rector recognised him.

But he was not the same cheerful man that he had been on Friday afternoon when he had shown Carolus the church. He seemed now hesitant and nervy and all the heartiness had gone from his manner.

“Yes,” he said to Carolus. “I remember. You were interested in church architecture. I'm afraid now I have to … I'm expected …”

“I'm delighted to have run into you, Mr. Whiskins. You see, I'm investigating the disappearance of Duncan Humby. I understand he was a friend of yours.”

“Oh, you are? I had no idea. A friend? I hadn't seen him for many years. I really knew his partner better.”

“Yet you were able to recognise him in his motor car last Monday.”

“Last Monday? Certainly not. I did not recognise him. I doubt if I could do so after so many years.”

“Yet you told Mrs. Caplan and Mr. Thripp that you had seen him in the village.”

“No, indeed. That is not at all what I said. I told Mrs. Caplan about this large black car I had seen turning up Church Lane, and she said at once it must have been Humby's. She seemed convinced of it, as though she wished me to have recognised him. But all I described, or could describe, was the car.”