Ellis Peters - George Felse 10 - The Knocker On Death's Door (11 page)

“He isn’t dead,” said Brian practically.

“He would have been, from all accounts, if you hadn’t showed up.”

Nobbie came and leaned her fair head and impudently pretty face across the bar towards Brian. “D’you know they’ve been grilling all of us, everybody who was in last night, about this Bristow fellow? In case some of the boys set up some sort of a fright for him in the night. But they never! Well,
you know
, don’t you? It
is
true, isn’t it, that you
saw something
? Go on, do tell us! You know what they’re saying? They’re saying when the door was moved back again,
the abbot came with it
! It was something like a monk you saw, wasn’t it? Go on, you can tell me,” she coaxed, her voice sinking to a confidential whisper. “I won’t say a word to a soul, honest, if you don’t want me to.”

Ellie Crouch materialised as if by magic, and tapped her daughter smartly on the shoulder. “Come on, are you serving here or not? Can’t you see Mr. Swayne’s waiting for a refill?”

Nobbie withdrew to her duty with a toss of her blonde head. Brian had always wondered why Mrs. Crouch had to shove her oar in every time Nobbie spoke civilly to him. Not that it mattered, because he was not in the least interested in Nobbie, he thought her fat and fair, and he liked his girls active and dark. Still, he wondered what the old lady (Ellie was a year older than his own mother and nearly as pretty!) had against a likely lad like him.

“You don’t want to let young Brian Jennings get too familiar with you,” said Ellie confidentially to her daughter, after Brian had departed. “After all, they haven’t solved this affair, have they, and he was in the middle of it this time, you can’t be too careful.” Her conscience pricked; she couldn’t really believe that the police suspected the Jennings boy, any more man she did, but all means are fair means in a crisis. “You can do better than a verger’s son,” she concluded, again doing herself less than justice, for in fact the distinct possibilities and attractions of the verger’s son were the chief cause of her disquiet.

“Him?” said Nobbie, astonished. “Oh,
Mom
! Why, he used to sit next to me nearly all through school.
Me
go overboard for
Brian
? It’d feel like necking with me own brother!”

Sometimes Ellie Crouch’s family, in their forthright innocence, came out with things that made her blood run cold.

The office telephone rang at about eleven o’clock on Monday morning, and Dinah went to answer it in the certainty that it would be Hugh with the final placings.

“It’s too early,” Dave warned her. “They won’t have all their sums done for hours yet, and what’s the good of reporting a provisional result?”

Dinah came back from the telephone with a thoughtful look on her face, and a small spark of curiosity in her eye as she looked at her brother. “It’s for you. It’s a girl. Name of Alix Trent.” It was a name she had never heard, but she carefully kept the question out of her voice. Dave could not even be sure why he had not told Dinah about Alix; perhaps out of the lingering fear that after all nothing might come of it.

His face gave nothing away as he went to the telephone; hut certainly he went with alacrity.

“I know you told me to get in touch with the police,” said the creamy voice of Alix over the line, without preamble, “but I needed to confirm something with you first. I couldn’t be sure whether to trust my memory or not. It was almost the last thing you said to me on Friday, unless I’m making a mistake. You said ‘anything you think of about the door
or the knocker
.’ You did say ‘knocker,’ didn’t you?”

Yes, that’s right.“ But he couldn’t see where she was leading him.

‘Good, so I wasn’t imagining things. It was the only time you mentioned a knocker, as far as I remember, so I wanted to make sure of my ground before I started anything.”

“You mean you’ve remembered something odd about the knocker?”

“Very odd,” agreed Alix. There was one instant of curious and speculative silence on the line. “
There wasn’t any knocker
!”

It was the simplest discrepancy possible, and it had never for one moment occurred to him. He couldn’t help reacting with: “Are you
sure
?” though the last thing he had intended was to cast any doubts on anything for which Alix vouched with such certainty.

“Absolutely sure. I couldn’t tell you any details of the carving now, but I do know it was just a great carved door, with nothing whatever stuck on it, except the big iron latch and lock that fastened it.”

“But why?” he wondered blankly. “Why, in that case, should anyone have put a knocker on it now?”

“I can think of one good reason,” said Alix sensibly. “It had one originally, which for some reason was taken off, and when they gave the door back to the church they simply restored the knocker, too.”

“Yes. That makes sense.” But it was plain from the tone of his voice that he was not satisfied. If Bracewell had been mistakenly pursuing a mystery which was no mystery, and a scoop which was no story at all, why should anyone want to kill him? Why knock the second inquisitive stranger on the head? “I can think of one not so good one, too. To hide something queer about that part of the door.”

“Yes,” she agreed after a startled pause, “that’s also possible.”

Bracewell had had a camera with him on his second visit, though he had denied carrying one. Everyone knew Brian had found it in the waste dump in the churchyard, minus the film. According to a witness, Bracewell had been photographing details of the oldest carving in the church. Checking whether everything matched, the period, the workmanship, the type of iron, the decorative style? Or if not actually checking on these things for himself, compiling a file of evidence for someone who could?

“You never mentioned to Bracewell about there being no knocker?”

“It never arose. If you hadn’t spoken the word I should never have thought about it.” And she added reasonably: “But he had his own memories of that trip, he may well have hit on the same point in the end. He went back to investigate on the spot, anyhow.”

He had, and look where it got him!

“Alix, the police ought to hear this from you, and as soon as possible. Are you free, if I come along and collect you now?”

“Yes,” she said without hesitation. “How soon can you be here?”

“In about an hour and a quarter.”

“Good, I’ll be waiting.”

Opportunity dazzled him, suddenly turning the tragedies of Mottisham bright side out. “And then come home and meet my sister. Have tea with us. You needn’t hurry back, need you?”

“No,” said Alix, “I needn’t hurry back.”

It was somewhat after three o’clock that afternoon when Alix and Dave left the temporary police office at the vicarage. Sergeant Moon closed the door upon them reverently, and let out a great breath of mingled wonder, elation and achievement.

“The door! I always said it was the door! As simple as that! Who says we never get any luck? A very nice little witness, that!”

Detective Constable Reynolds, who had taken down Alix’s brief and brisk statement at her dictation, and was now watching her furtively through the window out of the corner of his eye, as she walked away with Dave down the vicarage drive, also thought her a very nice little witness, but reflected sadly that she seemed to be already booked. She had certainly tossed a fire-cracker into the workings of the case.

“Well, do we get the thing off?” asked Sergeant Moon practically.

“We do, and right away,” said George. “We also get a check on the question of whether it does or doesn’t belong where it is.” He lifted the telephone and dialled the forensic laboratory. “Your young Crowe is the man of his hands around here, Jack, isn’t he? Get hold of him and tell him what the job is, and he’ll tell us what tools he wants.”

“He’s already got all the tools there are,” said Sergeant Moon.

“That’s the style!” He turned to the telephone as the distant voice hailed him. “Hullo, Joe? George Felse here. Can you get hold of Professor Grazier for me, and get him out here as soon as possible? If he’s not available, find me somebody else who knows about ironwork—especially medieval ironwork. And I mean
knows
! Somebody who can date things within a quarter of a century, and locate them by district, school, master, or whatever goes for iron. If he knows as much about stone and wood carving of the same period, all the better. Make it urgent.” He cradled the receiver. “Get some of your boys on the gates, Jack, and ward off all witnesses for the present. This is one even the grapevine may miss if nobody actually sees it. This bunch of yours—you know this?—work mainly by intelligent deduction. Sometimes I think we ought to recruit the bar of the ‘Duck’
en masse
into the force. But who’s to deduce a silly, simple move like taking the knocker off a door?”

It took the expert an hour and a half to get out to Mottisham, but it took Constable Crowe, that solid, silent, deft-handed countryman, just about as long to detach the four heavy bolts that secured the knocker to the door. Their heads were buried among the burgeoning leaves that sprouted from the mane of the mythical beast, and spread out into a round plaque flattened against the oak. Crowe dealt with them one by one, delicately and slowly, reluctant to deface even the black paint with which—surely misguidedly?—they had been coated along with the knocker. Evidence was evidence; and besides, they might find nothing beneath, and be faced with the necessity of restoring what they had displaced. The first minor revelation came when he had removed two of them, and the whole mass of iron submitted to being moved slightly in its place, to reveal a frilled edge of thick, soiled varnish beneath. The knocker had not been disturbed when the door was cleaned. Therefore the knocker had not been restored to its place only when the move to the church was contemplated, and the necessary cleaning begun, but at some previous time and for some other reason. After Alix Trent’s visit; yet before the transfer to the National Trust was contemplated.

The third bolt came away with a slight, grating protest, and was laid aside on a sheet of newspaper beside the other two. The beast’s head, sanctuary ring and all, could now be turned in a half-circle before it jarred and stuck, and Crowe turned it gently back again.

The fourth bolt was tenacious, but subject to manipulation because it was the last. Crowe withdrew it, laid it beside its fellows, and used both hands reverently to dislodge and lift away the entire weighty mass of the knocker, beast, ring, leaves and all. It left the wood with an audible sucking sigh, and he placed it upon the extended sheet of polythene set to receive it.

Shoulder-high to a man of medium height, chest-high to a man a little taller, the irregular, rounded blot of old varnish darkened like a wen against the pale, scoured oak. At first glance that blank, uncleaned surface appeared to be all they had uncovered; on closer inspection there was one minute freckle on its smoothness, a little to the left of centre, a round mole where the glancing light clotted, as though the varnish had been applied over an oblique knothole. Only this knothole was not darker, but faintly paler than the surrounding wood.

“Touched up,” said Crowe, and gouged delicately at the spot. The varnish flaked. He scraped a few shreds of dry matter into his palm. “Plastic wood. Somebody filled up—a hole.” He didn’t want to name it more exactly, not yet. No one else wasted words on it, either. It was plain that this had been done some time before the restoration was undertaken. “Want me to drill it out?”

“Do that,” said George, “and go carefully.”

Busy as a terrier at a rat-hole, the drill kicked back pale, powdery shreds of plastic wood, and buried itself deeper and deeper into the mass of the door. What can you hide in a door? George had asked earlier. And where? There it is, a slab of wood with two sides, everything about it visible to the naked eye. No, not quite everything.

In a very short time they had a deep, narrow hole, disappearing obliquely into more than five inches of hard, ancient oak, but not emerging on the inner side. A very minute, staring hole, the significance of which there was no mistaking. The drill changed its tune, emitted a brief, indignant whine, and was halted on the instant. Crowe looked at George, and slowly withdrew the drill in a fine flurry of dust.

“We’ve got something besides wood in here, sir.”

George selected a long, slender screwdriver from among the tools, and probed gingerly down into the tunnel. A faint, metallic scratching jarred through his fingers like an electric shock.

The expert on medieval iron had slipped his car into the vicarage drive unnoticed while they were all concentrating on the job in hand, and been directed to the porch by a lurking constable. He came up behind George silently, a thin, stringy individual with mild, shrewd eyes. They had met before, though not over medieval iron; the whole art of the period was his province, and he had once given judgement on a forged lime-wood Madonna ten inches high, in a very different case.

“What you need, George, my boy,” said the expert kindly, “isn’t a medievalist, it’s a ballistics expert. If that isn’t a bullet-hole, then I’ve never seen one.”

“Thank you,” said George gravely, “thank you very much. I’d just come to the same conclusion, only I can take it a stage further. This isn’t merely a bullet-hole—-it’s complete with bullet as well.”

“To be fair,” pronounced Professor Brazier critically, hefting the iron mass in both hands to turn it to the light, “it’s a very creditable shot at a match. Even the style of the local carving and ironwork here do appear to be much the same. A layman would never question it. But actually the knocker is at least a hundred years newer than the latch and lock on the door. That needn’t preclude the knocker having been made for the door, of course, but in fact this iron can be placed pretty accurately in Sussex, and the possibility of its being made there expressly for use here is negligible. It isn’t even likely that it should find its way up here by chance. Nobody’d go far afield for what he wanted, this district had its own smiths, and they knew their business. But I’ll tell you something, George—if somebody did hunt round and buy this piece specifically to cover that bullet-hole, then it was somebody who knows his stuff a good deal better than average. And he probably had to hunt a good long time before he found what he was looking for. You might trace it through the antique trade. Somebody must have sold it to him.”

“Thanks,” said George, “but why go through the entire antique trade? There are thousands of them—there’s only one of him.”

They had to wait two hours more for the report on the recovered bullet. Sergeant Moon had been dispatched home for a well-earned rest and a brief look at his more regular responsibilities, and it was Detective Sergeant Brice who answered the telephone and handed the receiver across the table. “Here’s ballistics on the line, sir.”

“Hullo, what have you got for us?”

“It’s what
you
had for
us
,” corrected the cheerful, enthusiastic voice of the distant expert. “We don’t get many fired bullets in that sort of condition. Whoever fired it might have been deep-freezing it for posterity. What did you say it was in?”

“About six inches of medieval oak,” said George.

“Yes—splendid! If you were buried in that, George, you’d be there in good condition to hear the crack of doom and bob up fresh as a daisy. Well, this little job ought to penetrate about three inches of soft pine board at fifteen feet, which makes it pretty clear that it was fired from closer than that in this case—say not more than six to eight feet from the door. It’s a .25 ACP—6.35 millimeters—and fired from an automatic pistol. I think it ought to be good enough to identify the gun, with luck, supposing you ever find the right one out of the thousands there must be running around loose with this type of ammo in—even this long after the war!”

“I take it we’re lucky he—or they—didn’t just dig it out and dispose of it on the spot.”

“Hell’s own job getting it out of that lot. No, if it had to be covered up, then the knocker was probably the easiest way, as well as the most thorough. I bet your boy didn’t have any easy work recovering it. But odd, in a way, going to all that trouble, when you consider that this little fellow never was guilty of anything except being fired into a door.

No crime there—except maybe retaining a war souvenir without any legal right.”

“No,” agreed George, “no crime there. Yet we’ve got a couple of ’em now, murder and attempted murder, all because people got too inquisitive about that bit of misdated camouflage. Thanks, anyhow! Let us have it in writing when you can.”

“Right away. So long, George.”

George hung up, and sat back in his chair. “All right, then, that’s it. Come on, we’ll pick up Reynolds and make a move. The way things are developing, it’s high time we paid a formal visit on Robert Macsen-Martel, and took an official look at that cellar of his.”