Ellis Peters - George Felse 10 - The Knocker On Death's Door (17 page)

IT was approaching noon as George drove up the M6, with the map spread on the passenger seat beside him, and Kirkheal Moor heavily underlined, for fear he should never be able to find it again. According to the directories it was a small market town in one of Lancashire’s surprising islands of rural peace, shrunken now but still individual between the city complexes; on the map it was printed so small as to be almost invisible. So much the better: perhaps the electoral roll would be modest enough to be easily combed, perhaps the place would be so much of a survival that the postmaster or the vicar would know everyone who lived there, and where to put his finger on him.

He should, no doubt, have borrowed a driver who had been in bed overnight; motorways were not for people who had gone short of sleep. But police resources were never large enough, and there was still a lot to be done at Mottisham; and there were no rested men to spare. George tanked up with coffee, drove fast but steadily, and kept his mind as well as his eyes on the road.

He had consigned the Abbey to Brice’s care. Collins would be withdrawing himself and all his accumulated notes to the vicarage office, and if he got through all the conceivable checking and re-checking of reports before evening he would have done well. Brice’s squad had still to sift and replace all the soil removed from the floor; and its other main job was the gun. Brice just might have enough manpower to search the whole house for it before night; he had begun already before George left. It was more than dubious whether they would find it, of course, there had been some years to dispose of it, but they must at least make sure it was not in the Abbey. Hugh, questioned as to whether there had ever been a gun in the house, had candidly listed the good sporting guns which had quit the walls one by one as the money ran out, and had had vague recollections that his father had brought back some sort of minor souvenir from North Africa at the end of the war, but had not the least idea what had happened to it—probably that had been sold, too, if it had any cash value—and didn’t remember seeing it for years. It was typical of Robert, senior, that he had had a very dashing war record indeed, though too picaresque and irregular to raise him higher than major; and also typical, and one of the better things about him, that he had shed the “major” as soon as he shed his uniform, and refused to acknowledge such a form of address ever after.

As for Robert, junior, careworn and remote, withdrawn for much of the time into his mother’s bedroom, he had declined to answer questions about guns as he had declined to answer questions about bodies in the cellar. His eyes and his manner said that he knew everything; but his tongue stated monotonously that he had nothing to say.

So there was George, heading north through Cheshire and thanking God for the motorways which had enabled the police, as well as the criminals, to cover long distances with the minimum of effort; while at the back of his mind lingered the anxieties Sergeant Brice had to deal with in his absence. All the men now on duty in the Abbey had been working without respite for more than twenty-four hours, and would be clocking up several hours more before they could go home and sleep. So we quit the Abbey this evening, George had ordered. Seal the cellar, find the gun if you can, ask any questions that may occur to you, but at the end of the day send the lot of them home to get a proper break. Nobody’s going to run, not while the old lady is so ill. And we have enough fresh men to mount a watch on the front and rear approaches to the house, which is all that should be necessary.

In the meantime—he was sweeping past the exit for the Keele service area at the time, and wondering about another coffee and a ’phone call home—there was the ghost of Robert, senior, whispering all the time at his shoulder. People had loved and admired that Robert—not having to live with him, of course, but just seeing him stride across the horizon in his own decorative fashion, safely at a distance. People had also hated him, people who had suffered from him or for him, people who had been forced to come to close quarters, instead of idolising from a distance. What was the truth about him? And why, above all, why should the unknown man from the cellar be carrying, safely secreted with his most precious possessions, a notice of this Midshire squire’s death? Clearly this had somehow come to his notice—no great wonder, for the
Echo
covered a third of England and two-thirds of Wales—and had brought him to the Abbey. Plus, don’t forget, a substantial sum of money, a large suitcase full of clothes, and a valid passport, brand-new just as Robert, senior, staged his spectacular death. A little man, discreetly on the run with what he had. And showing up at the Abbey in the hope of more? But on what grounds? What hold could an obituary give him over Robert’s heirs? And did he know how little there actually was for them to inherit?

It became more and more clear to him, as he pulsed steadily northwards through the monstrous landscape of the M6, in some stretches of which new bridges produced the only glimpses of beauty, that the date of that obituary— which Sergeant Collins might at this very moment be checking—could not be far removed from the date of T.J. Claybourne’s death. There was a direct connection. But what it was he could not conceive.

He stopped at the service station at Knutsford, and called Bunty at home. She was used to waiting around, in so far as one ever gets used to it. She reassured and reinvigorated as she always did, giving little sign of the reassurance for which she herself had been waiting. There is a technique that makes life under these conditions easier, and Bunty had it. She even contrived to provide news that was like a shot in the arm.

“Dominic phoned. He’s been doing some thinking, apparently. Or perhaps not thinking, only reacting emotionally. He says he wants to go and put in a year at least of voluntary service in India. That’s the influence of Kumar and his Swami, of course, but he means it. And he could do worse.”

“With a degree like his?”

“Well, that can only be a bonus, can’t it? Whatever he does!”

George rang off, astonishingly refreshed. How like Bunty to be able to recall to him a world outside Middlehope, that narrow, deep, archaic cleft in the border hills, in itself a world. Everything advanced or receded into due proportion, in one single world this time. He felt enlarged, and at the same time acutely concentrated on the thing he had in hand.

He called the Abbey. Constable Barnes answered, vast and calm, and called Sergeant Brice to the line.

“I’m glad you made contact,” said Brice, expansive with relief. He was young and bright and anxious, grateful for the delegation of responsibility, but even more grateful for continued interest and supervision. “We did find something else—the cap off a gold pencil or pen, I don’t know which, but it’s gold, an expensive one and not an ultra-modern type, could be as much as ten years back when it was designed. No, not in the soil-heap—in the pit itself.”

“Where in the pit?” asked George.

“Bout amidships, slightly to the left when entering. We’ve stuck a marker in the place.”

“Good, that was wise. Just hold the thing, don’t clean it up at all, wrap it and hold it. And I’ll tell you what you can do—try it on Robert, see if he recognises it. Don’t press him, just notice his reaction that’s all. If you can let any of the squad go before evening, do. I hope to be back in time to make the dispositions for the night myself. And go home yourself when you’ve got the other clear. If I need to contact you, I’ll call you there.”

He replaced the receiver and started back to the car, among the hectic comings and going of hundreds of vehicles and thousands of people. Well, well, who would have thought a queer impulse like that would have paid off? What you need in this racket, he thought, clambering in and slamming the door, is lots of patience and lots of slack, to let people run or linger, as they choose, until they trip themselves up in their own cleverness. And their own over-anxiety! Also, of course, a morsel of luck.

But still he did not understand
why
!

He left the M6 at exit number 23, the A580 between Manchester and Liverpool, left that again at Moss Bank and went up into the white roads that veered bleakly towards the moors. He had the impression he always had after using the motorways, of having traversed several kingdoms in the twinkling of an eye, and being astray now in a land where he did not even know the language. And then he was in the uplands, and suddenly it was all familiar, Middlehope all over again, an ingrowing survival from pre-industrial and early-industrial society, an enclosed and private place. And that was Kirkheal Moor. Clearly it was, technically, a town. It had a distinct centre, with church, open square, market-enclosure and shops. But minute, hardly bigger than a village. There was one new estate, but so small as to indicate in itself the hopelessness of enlargement until one of the surrounding towns reached and engulfed, like a swollen sea, this island of the past. And there were four distinct streets, shooting outwards from the square, and a maze of little lanes and alleyways linking them in every direction. Perhaps six or seven thousand souls in all, counting the outlying farms, the bleak sheep-pastures on the moors that swelled on all sides, even the high mosses where solitary souls cut peat. And all practically within gunshot of Liverpool!

So the end of his journey was incredibly like the beginning. He had made a loop in space-time, and arrived at the very point of his departure. Parking his car in the square, he realised that it could not have been otherwise, that the uncanny relationship was what had made this whole adventure possible, though as yet he did not understand how.

He had luck, for there was only one Claybourne in the local telephone directory. Perhaps the name was not native here. So much the better for him. Possibly even this one would not have possessed a telephone but for being in business in a small way. What he found, in one of the streets radiating from the square, was a little grocery shop with one narrow, crowded window, so stacked up with tins and packets that it was difficult to see between them, and the diminutive interior had to get its light mainly from the glazed door. An overalled girl, lank-haired and indifferent, was wiping out the interior of the glass-topped counter. She looked at George dully when he asked for Mrs. Claybourne, and then turned without a word and went away through the curtained door at the rear of the shop. Mrs. R. Claybourne, the directory entry had said, which argued that there was no Mr. Claybourne, and the business belonged to the lady.

The girl drifted back into the shop, still wordless, followed by a slender, erect dark woman in a black dress and a lilac nylon overall. She must have been well into her sixties, slightly dry and withered now, with grey in the dark, abundant hair, but she brought in with her the instant impact of past beauty. Only afterwards was George aware of other impressions she carried unmistakably about with her: of immense and conscious rectitude, complete self-sufficiency and universal suspicion of everyone else. Not a comfortable woman to live with or work with now, but what she might once have been lingered in the chilly remains of striking good looks.

“I’m Mrs. Claybourne. You wanted to see me?”

“My name is Felse. If you can spare me a quarter of an hour or so of your time, I should be very grateful. It’s important.”

She studied him in silence for a moment, her fine dark eyes narrowed. Then, without any questions, she opened the house door wide, and said: “Come in!”

He had not expected so prompt an entry, but even less was he expecting the first remark she addressed to him, without preamble, as soon as they were safely shut into her neat front room, among the polished brass and the pot plants insidiously creeping round the walls:

“You’re police, aren’t you?” Not ashamed, not bitter, just bluntly practical. “Not that you’re all that typical, I suppose, but who else could you be? What’s he wanted for now?”

“I take it you’re referring to your son.” There was not much doubt of it; the startled face in the passport photograph bore a certain resemblance to hers, the eyes specially were her signature. “Thomas J. Claybourne.”

“Thomas Jeremiah,” she said flatly, and sat down in one of the glossily polished chairs. “Tom after his dad, Jeremiah after mine. He was a good man, my dad, church-warden for thirty years, and honest as the day. Many a time I’ve been right glad he died the year after I got married. Better that than live to know what we were coming down to. But I’ve got nothing to hide, and never have had. Them that will go to the devil must go alone, I’ll abide the same as I always have, in my dad’s way. So don’t think I’m ever likely to be hiding him here from your kind. What is it he’s done this time?”

George sat down opposite her, and drew out the passport from his wallet, and handed it to her, open at the photograph. “Is this a picture of your son? And these details, are they correct?”

She took the little book curiously in her hands, turning it to look at the cover. She had never seen a passport before, much less owned one; she would never in her life have any use for such a flighty thing. “That’s him, all right. Well, I never did! I never thought he meant it when he talked about emigrating.”

“He never got as far as that,” said George, and felt in his pocket for the one object he had taken from the body itself, a deplorable remnant which had once been a clean, folded handkerchief. The fact of being so neatly and tightly folded inside the lined breast pocket had preserved at least its inner portions, and these had been turned outwards now to conceal the worst, and expose the small initials in Indian ink on the hem, TC. “Can you also identify this as his property? No, don’t take it out of the plastic envelope, just look at it.”

“Doesn’t need much looking,” she said firmly. “I marked six of these for him, the last time he was here.” She looked up at George. Her eyes were shrewd, and the lines of her face hard as nails; perhaps she had had to be hard to survive. “I always did my duty by him when he chose to remember he was my son. Whether he ever paid his way or not, whether he ever gave a damn for me or not, and whether or not I stopped caring about him, either, when he came I fed him and housed him and mended his clothes. Not for love! Only for duty. He always walked out again as soon as it suited him—as soon as your people quit looking for him and his mates, I shouldn’t wonder, but I never asked him anything. When he went, he went. Like his dad before him, who cleared off without a word two years after we were married, and never showed his face here again. I’m not bothered, they’re neither of them much loss. I get along best alone. Men who walk out on me I don’t follow. This is my place, and here I stay, where I’m independent and respected.” She looked down again, narrowly, at the small plastic packet in her steely fingers, and asked in the same uncompromising voice: