Enter Pale Death (34 page)

Hunnyton listened intently to Joe’s story, jotting down his estimate of the time of his arrival at the scene, the time Goodfellow had expired, and the time he’d been shot at in the woods without comment or question. “Well, kindly drip your blood type onto the paper provided. I’ve got a neat little sketch here and I’m not about to add any extraneous bodily fluid contributions from Scotland Yard.”

“That villain tried to kill me. We’re lucky it’s not
my
corpse you’re waving off in an ambulance.”

“Everybody’s lucky
this
is the corpse if I read his letter aright.” Hunnyton sniffed. “Not before time and I’ll raise a glass to the perpetrator. Those are my deathbed sentiments, if anyone wants to hear them. Now, I hope you don’t mind, I borrowed Timmy and his flash new bike to run a few errands for me. First he summoned PC Godestone from his allotment to act as guard dog, then he belted off to the vet’s with a phone message for Adelaide to transmit to the force back in Cambridge. We’re going to have to put that lady on the pay roll. Or me on the phone line.” He sighed. “And there goes my privacy. There’ll be a squad out within the hour. I haven’t alerted the Co-op funeral services yet—he’s going straight onto a slab at the morgue. I want a proper postmortem done by a doc I can trust in Cambridge. This is one case that’s not going to come back and bite me in the bum.”

“Not a suicide, then, Hunnyton?”

Joe received a scathing look. “I think you know that as well as I do. Could easily have been, though. I’ve come across these cases before. Bankrupt farmers usually. Their guns are old friends. If your arm is long enough, you can reach the trigger and fire it upwards into your head. Toe grip not unknown. Remote place like this—he’d have kept his gun at the ready under the bed in the country way. It’ll be interesting to see whose fingerprints are on the trigger.”

“I’m betting—Goodfellow’s.” Joe sighed.

“So am I. This is murder, Sandilands; we both know that. But it’s murder by a bloke who’s very sure of himself. Cool as you please. No emotion in evidence—no fight, nothing broken. Familiar with the victim’s habits. Knew he’d find him sleeping off a hangover. Knew he kept a loaded gun to hand. This was planning so careful, the bugger’s left not a trace of his presence. I tell you, Joe—I haven’t found so much as a hair so far. That’s worrying. They always leave something … Perhaps the forensics boys will see more than I’m seeing. Our careful friend would take the time
to apply the dead man’s fìnger to the trigger when he’d wiped it clean, don’t you think? He might even have been wearing gloves and needn’t have bothered with the dead man’s finger. What he hadn’t counted on was that his target might be more alert than usual this morning. Planning an early get-away, Goodfellow might have drunk less than his usual eight pints at the Sorrel Horse.

“I was there at the Horse, Sandilands, last night. For the first part of the evening at any rate. In the public bar. Goodfellow was in the snug buying a round for his cronies. His last round as it turns out. I noted he sank two pints before I left. The barman will cast further light. We shall see. The murderer hadn’t counted on the instinctive recoil of a threatened body away from a blast, what’s more. Point blank range. The bullet was supposed to go straight up and take the top of the head off. But it went crosswise, through the throat and jaw. Removed his ear but left the skull intact, I’d say.”

Hunnyton looked dispassionately at the shattered head. “There’s so much blood and it’s so fresh it’s hard to tell. Are you sure it was as long ago as seven?” He tweaked the dead arm, testing again for rigor mortis. “Anyway, the doc will tell us more. I’m not an expert. Whatever—the shot only did three quarters the damage intended.”

“Nothing much our bloke could do to finish him off though. A dying suicide doesn’t generally have the strength to fire the second barrel.”

“He couldn’t hang around after the shot. He must have judged his victim had only minutes to survive. Made a fast exit and hoped for the best. Too bad for him that a nosy Scotland Yarder was taking the air in the environs and had the benefit of hearing the victim’s last gasp. What the hell were you doing in the wood at that hour? Never mind,” he rushed on, “Timing, Joe? Can you be precise?”

“No trouble! Styles and I heard the shot at seven o’clock exactly as I said. We were breakfasting together and he happened to open the window at the crucial moment.”

“That confirms what Adelaide told me. She sent Timmy back to me with a note. She was out in the garden and heard the first shot at seven. A second at seven forty. Country folk are so used to gunfire they wouldn’t notice but being just down from London, Adelaide did.”

“That’s exact. The second was the one fired at me as I retreated. But tell me, Adam, what did
you
make of his letter?” Joe had been aware that the superintendent had, in his rush of sympathy for him, fallen into calling him by his Christian name. It seemed polite to return the compliment and in view of the personal nature of the question, a more natural and feeling approach.

The handsome features congealed into a dark scowl. “Hardly the last note from a bloke about to top himself, was it? Had more the flavour of one who was just about to call a taxi and leg it. In fact, he’d got as far as packing. His bag’s the other side of the bed. Full to the gunwales! He wasn’t counting on coming back.” The professional comment was followed by a more dismissive tone. “It was no more than I’d expected. And suspected for years. It’s all right, Joe. I’m not one to have a fit of the vapours. I hope
you
didn’t fall for his blarney?”

“I didn’t. There was much truth in there but, even for me, the one lie stood out.”

“The heels?”

“That’s right. One detail that speaks volumes. You weren’t here, Adam, when Phoebe died?”

“No. She was nailed down in her coffin and the Trueloves were presiding by the time I got here. That was a different world, pre-war. None of the right questions asked. Not even a police autopsy. A shameful, self-inflicted death, they reckoned. Better shovelled underground sharpish. A maidservant. Not worth
investigating and annoying the Trueloves for. Not with her ladyship in a delicate condition.”

“But this Goodfellow, or whoever he was …” Joe hesitated.

“You can call him Goodfellow, right enough. I checked him out, years ago. That is his name. Robert Goodfellow, ex-army, a.k.a. Robin, Mischievous Sprite of the Forest.”

“Well, our sprite describes graphically a very sure way of drowning someone. Holding the heels up forces the head down. It has the advantage of cutting off the screams as well as filling the lungs. He either did, in fact, as he says, see James Truelove holding her under or …”

“She had a fear of water—I told you—she would never have gone in the moat, not even for a swimming lesson with the young master. He bloody did it himself! Tried to force himself on her, I expect. She wasn’t having any of his nonsense and threatened to tell me … He decided to silence her. Swine!”

Hunnyton lanced the corpse with a steel glare. Delivering a second death. Joe thought that if anything of Goodfellow’s mischievous spirit was still hanging about the place, it would run screeching straight into the jaws of hell for shelter before meeting that implacable eye.

Limited in his movements to the area of two pages of the
Daily Mirror
, Joe had to suppress his urge to clap a comforting hand on Hunnyton’s shoulder. “Well, you won’t have to swing for him, Adam, and I’m glad of that. Look, I think I know who might have something to tell us about the drowning. Someone who was close about at the time. Leave it to me. By the way, I’ve instructed Styles and Mrs. Bolton to keep the guests away from the wood, so you’ll get a clear run at this when the CID crew arrive. By the time they get here, the company at the Hall—and the whole village apparently—will be gathered to enjoy the jollifications on the front lawn.”

“Ah. Yes. Of course. The Parade of Horses. Worth seeing, Joe, if you’ve got the time and stomach for it.”

“It’s the parade of humans I wouldn’t miss for anything. I don’t forget I’m down here to tease out the puzzle of Lavinia’s death. About which Goodfellow is sinisterly silent. Don’t you think? He throws a distorted light on an ancient murder but drops not a hint of the recent one in his letter.”

“Eager to get off and pack? Not the world’s most fluent writer—he wasn’t about to embark on a further chapter?”

“Hard to believe he had nothing to say. If that chap had had mud to hand I don’t think he’d have hesitated to throw it.”

“You’re right. There was a little something he was keeping in reserve. You’ll see! Extra blackmailing ammo? He’s skilled in the use of hanging threats over people. Not too much, not too little. Push a man just far enough and no further. The ones who get away with it, the ones who never turn up on our books are the clever ones, the ones who are so close to their victims they can judge their every reaction and have the restraint never to demand more than can be borne. Like the East African farmers who live on their beasts’ blood—always allow the victim to recover and thrive before you open up his vein again. In connection with which—you might like to cast an eye on Goodfellow’s outbuilding before you go.”

“Outbuilding? He has a latrine somewhere about the place I suppose?”

“Well he was only human. It’s carefully camouflaged and architect-designed in keeping with the main building. You’ll find it twenty yards northeast of the rear. Have a rummage around. Here, put these gloves on. Oh, and you may want to hold your sensitive nose.”

A smaller, simpler version of the pine cabin stood, door closed, hidden from all eyes by a thick screen of hawthorn bushes and tangled ivy. A shed any man would have liked to install in his back garden, at first sight. Joe opened the door and entered gingerly. On the left was, indeed, an army-style latrine of the best
continental porcelain. Scrupulously clean and scented with hanging bunches of lavender. A large enamel water jug stood by ready for service. On the right another door opened into an allotment holder’s heaven. A potting bench ran the length of the cabin, seed trays, used, cleaned and awaiting the next sowing stood in piles, gardening and woodworking tools were fixed on racks on the walls. An old, horsehair-stuffed armchair was still dented from Goodfellow’s last occupancy, a pile of
Men Only
and
Liliput
magazines lurked underneath.

It was the range of wooden shelves with their pigeon-holed compartments that took Joe’s eye. The kind of fitting you could see in any pharmacy, it had probably been bought in at a farmers’ auction. Some of the compartments had a name inked in on their surface. Joe read names of herbs—hartshorne, white willow, marshmallow … One of them seized his attention. It had a piece of writing paper torn from a police notebook stuck on it with a piece of elastoplast. “Look in here, Sandilands! This drawer was slightly open when I entered. The only one.”

The drawer must have been airtight. The smell of the contents would have been held in check. Joe decided to leave a detailed inspection of the scrapings of black residue to Hunnyton’s forensic boys and merely noted that essence of something deeply unpleasant lurked within. It brought instantly to mind the smell of the offering Lady Truelove had been trying to make to Lucifer. He slammed it shut. Lavinia had sent her maid with Goodfellow’s hand-written prescription for spices to the chemist but the second formula, the one she had used along with the toad’s bone with such disastrous consequences, had come straight from this workshop.

Joe put his head round the door. “Got the message! How are you doing, mate?”

Hunnyton sighed and looked down at his notebook. “It’s hopeless! Joe—can I be frank?” He looked up at Joe with a wry
smile. “If you were the officer in charge of this bloody case you’d have to arrest yourself! I think you know what I’m saying.”

Joe stepped inside and kicked the door shut. He ignored the newspaper doormat and went to stand directly in front of Hunnyton, challenging him, eye to eye.

“No. I don’t. I think you’d better elucidate for me, Superintendent.”

Hunnyton swallowed and turned away, unable to withstand the challenge of his superior officer’s response. “Oh, come on, Joe. You must see it!”

CHAPTER 20

Hunnyton waved his notebook under Joe’s nose as though it had suddenly caught fire and he was about to get his fingers burned. “Every word of my notes reflects procedure done by the book. You can read it for yourself and tell me what conclusion any sane man would come to. Any judge, any jury. Any Scotland Yard Assistant Commissioner. Why don’t you give it a go?”

The true enormity of the embarrassed half-accusation hit Joe and, for a moment, sent his mind reeling.

Gathering himself, he began to speak slowly and carefully. “No trace of an interloper, as far as it goes, but you have a considerable amount of evidence of
my
passage through. I have a firm alibi for the seven o’clock shot but, as you say, death did indeed not occur until after that time. A mischief-maker—no, let’s say simply a scrupulous reader of the notes—might conclude that the second shot it was that did for him. Seven forty. The pathologist may well conclude that later time to be the actual time of death. I couldn’t fault him. Though I would expect the usual umbrella statement of ‘at a time between six and nine.’ I claim to have been the target of that shot myself but where’s the evidence of that? It went skying into the trees. I take off back to the Hall where I am observed to arrive by one or two witnesses, covered in blood and hurrying to change my clothes. Suitably clad for church, I return
to the scene of the crime an hour later to check on the progress of the detective I have myself alerted. How am I doing?”

Hunnyton nodded. He had the grace, Joe noted, to look rather sickened by the interview.

“I have the skill, the ruthlessness and the opportunity. I deny none of that. But motive, Superintendent? Why the hell should I put my neck on the line for a man unknown to me before yesterday? For that villain? Why would I want him dead?” Suddenly understanding, Joe pointed to his face and laughed. “A log-chucking contest in the woods goes badly for me and I decide to wreak revenge? I so envy his carefree bucolic existence I decide to challenge him for the priesthood? Oh, come on!”