The Man with a Load of Mischief (15 page)

She looked up at him and set down the glass. “Hetta's the name.” Although in the very stronghold of middle age, there still clung to Hetta remnants of an old glamour. Plump now, and hennaed, it was clear it wasn't always so. Even now there were ripples of posture and rustles of unseen silk, which suggested better days. She corked up the bottle and said, “Garden's just through that door.”

 • • • 

And it was very cold.

“Why'd he come out here in the cold to have his pint?” asked Wiggins as they stood looking down at the body sprawled across the white metal table. Beside the body was a half-drunk pint of lager.

“Because he was supposed to meet someone, I imagine.”

“Oh. Who, sir?”

Jury just looked at Wiggins, who seemed to be expecting an answer. “I wish I knew, Sergeant. Look at this.” Jury pointed to a book lying beneath the hand of the murdered man. Since Pratt said the lab crew had been over the place, he didn't have to worry about prints, and he gently pulled the book away. “Well, well.
Bent on Murder
. By our own Mr. Darrington.”

Wiggins said, “That's something, that is. A red herring, do you think, sir?”

Sometimes Wiggins amazed Jury. He could ask perfectly inane questions, as he had done a minute ago, and at other times he could do a fair job of deduction. Perhaps it had something to do with his nose being stuffed or unstuffed. “I wouldn't be surprised, Sergeant. Now, fill me in.”

Wiggins took out his cellophane-wrapped box of drops, and Jury waited patiently while he undid them and popped one in his mouth. “Name's Jubal Creed, sir. From his driver's license we got that he lives in a town in East Anglia called Wigglesworth. That's in Cambridgeshire. The Weatherington men are trying to get hold of his family. We found his car parked out in the lot. They've driven that along to Weatherington, too. He stopped here last night, had his evening meal and then breakfast this morning, and Mrs. Willypoole said he came out here around ten-thirty, or a bit later.”

Jury nodded and went down on one knee to examine Creed further. A red indentation around his neck, the slightly blued complexion, and the eyes told the story. Wiggins had closed them, but they bulged beneath the lids. The mark around the neck had probably been made with a wire, as in the case of Small. It had cut into the skin. There could not have been much of a struggle.

“Neat, clean, and quiet. Just get behind your victim for a few seconds and —” Jury rose.

“I called Superintendent Racer, sir. Hope that was right.”

“Thank you. I'm sure he was thrilled.”

Wiggins allowed himself a smile. “He wondered why it wasn't you making the call. I told him you were busy, sir.”

“If Lady Ardry had not been so eager to tell me about this herself, you would have got hold of me earlier. Perhaps we should reinstitute the policy of killing the messenger who brings the bad news.”

“She was on the road, bicycling, and some passing motorist told her about the murder. That's what she said, anyway.”

Jury snorted. “We can break
that
alibi, Wiggins.”

Wiggins actually laughed so that he had to get out his inhaler. He was a martyr to asthma.

“Find out when and why Creed left Cambridgeshire —”

Jury looked closer at Creed, whose face was turned a fraction upward from his arm, on which the head was lying. “Wiggins, what the devil's this?” Jury pointed to what appeared to be a cut on the nose. It had recently bled. Jury reached down and pulled the man's face around. Not one cut, two. As if a hand holding a razor had whipped twice across the bridge of the nose. Most of the blood had drained down the other side. The cuts were not deep, but still they sent a chill up Jury's spine. The practical joker, again? But what was the joke?

Before Wiggins could comment on the cuts, the door to the garden was opened by a brisk little man who introduced himself as Dr. Appleby, and apologized for not getting there sooner. He had had, he said, rather waspishly, the living to see to, also. After examining the victim quickly and efficiently, he said, “Well, there it is again. Strangulation by someone standing behind him. It's the larynx got most of the pressure. The skin's cut up a bit. Probably some sort of wire — like the others. Quick, neat, and, I might add” — and Appleby observed Jury over rimless spectacles, brows raised — “the third one around here.”

“Is that a fact, then?” said Jury. “Why doesn't London tell me these things?”

Appleby grunted. “After the postmortem I may be able to say more, but not much. Not if it's like the other two. Can place the time of death right now at, say, between nine and whenever the body was discovered — noon, was it?”

“We can narrow it more than that. He was still alive at ten-thirty.” Jury offered Appleby a cigarette, which the doctor accepted. “I assume there's no reason to believe this couldn't have been done by a woman as well as a man.”

“None. They've all been very small men — lightweights. And anyway, haven't we got over the idea that women are weaklings? It's certainly not a woman's method, though: poisons, pistols, that sort of thing — they're more what women choose.”

“How chauvinistic of you, Dr. Appleby.” said Jury, with a smile. “What do you make of the cuts across the bridge of the nose?”

“That
is
odd.” Appleby raised the face to take another look, then let it loll back again on the arm. “I honestly can't say. Certainly recent. The murderer?”

“Not while shaving, that's for sure.”

“Well, I'll be off, then.” Appleby looked down at the corpse and said, “Rubber sheet and stretcher'll be coming for that in a bit. See you, Inspector.” And he was gone.

Jury turned up his coat collar and shoved his hands in his pockets. He looked at the scene of the crime. It was a walled-in garden, a courtyard perhaps about fifty feet square, partly cobbled where the tables were set up, with the rest laid to lawn. To the left was an old stable block, part of which had been modernized and converted to the inn's toilets. The wall on the other three sides was very high. “Any outlets in that wall, Wiggins?”

“No, sir.”

Jury turned and looked at the rear of The Swan. Inside the wall were two truncated wings that enclosed part of the cobbled terrace, that part where the tables were spotted here and there, and where Creed had been sitting. At ground level were two windows, one in each end of these wings, but even if someone had been looking out, he could not have seen the murdered
man, since the table was in the nook made by the wings. There were no windows in the midsection, and over the terraced section was one of those cheap plexiglass roofs that kept off the elements. Handy for the murderer, who would leave no tracks in snow. Also, the roof effectively cut off the vision of anyone looking out the rear windows above, on the first or second levels. In such a public place it was an oddly secluded spot. The rear door was the only danger point, since someone might have opened it.

“Have the men been over the outside of the wall, Wiggins?”

“Yes, sir. Pratt had his men go over the ground. No tracks, though. Anyway, no one could have climbed that wall in a hurry. It's too high.”

“Hmm,” said Jury. “Well, let's talk with Mrs. Willypoole. Were there any other guests?”

“Not overnight, sir. But there were two from Long Piddleton stopped in around eleven when the bar opened. Miss Rivington and Mr. Matchett.”

Jury raised his eyebrows. “Did they now? And which Rivington?”

“Vivian Rivington.”

“Why?”

“She says they had lunch.”

“Have you talked with them?”

“No sir. They were gone when we got here.”

“Did you get hold of them?”

“I sent Pluck to have them stand by for questioning. He says they're in Long Piddleton, sir.”

Jury was silent for a moment, still studying the garden.

“Are you thinking what I'm thinking, sir?”

Jury was a bit surprised to hear that Wiggins had been thinking at all. He usually left that to Jury. “What's that, Sergeant?”

“That it's a regular locked-room mystery, sir.”

“How so?”

“Well, whoever did it must have come from
inside
the inn. But Mrs. Willypoole says that Mr. Matchett and Miss Rivington
never left their table. And she could only know that if she was in the room, too, seeing they didn't. So they all three have alibis.”

“Very good, Wiggins. And since no one could have climbed that wall, nobody could have done this murder, by your reckoning.

Wiggins smiled broadly. “Right, sir.”

Jury smiled too. “Only somebody did, now, didn't they? Go check the outside of that wall.”

 • • • 

“You say you found the deceased when you got curious about his being out there so long?”

“That's right,” said Mrs. Willypoole. “Couldn't imagine why he'd want to go out in the first place. There he was sprawled over one of the tables. At first I thought maybe he'd come over sick. But something told me not to touch him.” She shuddered and asked Jury for a cigarette.

“He was a guest here?”

She nodded. “I don't keep all that many sleeping rooms and sure not in winter. But he called up here a couple days ago —”

“Called? From where?”

She shrugged. “Don't know. Said he needed a room just for the night, and that's all. Surprised, I was. I mean, that anyone's heard of the place outside of Dorking Dean or Long Pidd.”

“So you knew he was a stranger.”

“Well, he was to me, wasn't he? He could have come from Dorking Dean, but why'd he want to book a room, then?”

Jury had the register open before him. “Jubal Creed. He didn't mention what his business was?” She shook her head. “Did he say why he wanted to take his drink outside?”

“Just that he wanted a breath of air.”

“Do many people from Long Piddleton visit The Swan?”

“A fair amount. Mostly on their way to Dorking Dean, or further. There were two here this morning, I was telling your sergeant —”

“That would be Simon Matchett and Miss Rivington?” She nodded. “Do you know them?”

“Him I do. He owns the Man with a Load of Mischief.” Her eye softened. “Ever so nice, is Mr. Matchett. Simon. She's been here several times, too, but I don't know her all that well.”

“Why were they here?”

“Why? Well, to have a bar meal — ploughman's lunch — bread, cheese, you know.”

“And what time was that?”

“About eleven. Early for lunch.”

“Did they come together?”

“Well, they came
in
together. But I took it they came in different cars, and met here.”

“You say it was near eleven?”

“Right after. I can't say to the minute, but I know I'd only just opened up the bar for him.”

“Did they sit up at the bar and talk, or what?”

“Oh, no. I served them their lunch at that table back there.” She pointed to the farthest of one of a dozen tables in the saloon bar. “So you didn't overhear anything they were saying?”

“No.”

“Did either of them leave the table?”

“No. And I was in here all the time, so I'm sure of that.”

“The only way to the garden is through that back door or the gate in the wall?” She nodded. “I noticed the terrace is partly enclosed between the wings of the building.” Jury picked up Wiggins's box of cough drops and set it between and slightly to the rear of a bottle of catsup and some Branston pickle. “There are windows at the rear of these wings, but you can't see into this part of the garden.” He put his hand on the cough drop box. “So, in effect, the only way anyone can see what's going on in the garden where the tables are is through the door. Which was closed, it being winter.” She nodded again.

“Do you know any of these people, Hetta?” Jury rattled off the names of all the others who had been at the Man with a Load of Mischief the night Small was murdered.

“They've all been in one time or another. Even the vicar. I don't know as I could tell you what they look like, but the names are familiar.”

“How long did Mr. Matchett and Miss Rivington stay?”

She ran a peeling red nail over her brow. “Umm. Maybe an hour, maybe forty-five minutes.”

At that moment, Wiggins came through the front door of the Swan, looking pleased with himself. “I found it, sir. A window. Come outside, will you?” As Jury rose, Wiggins looked down at the condiment-and-cough-drop arrangement and rescued his box from the table.

“Thanks very much, Hetta.” Jury smiled. “You've been a great help.”

Hetta apparently remembered it was never too late. She straightened her jumper to its best advantage and smoothed back her red curls. “Well, I always say, if you can't keep your head in a crisis, you'd best not go into trade. Bounced a few in my day, Mr. Jury. Men got to learn where to keep their hands, I always say.” She looked at Jury's with a smile.

“Absolutely. If we have more questions, you'll be available?”

“Yes, indeed.” The smile grew more roguish still.

 • • • 

“It's the toilet, sir,” said Wiggins, pointing upward. They were standing on the outside of the wall, that part comprised of the converted stable block. “It's not too hard; I just shoved the window in, crammed through it and came out the door into the courtyard.”

Jury looked from the window down at the ground. The snow had nearly melted and the ground was hard. Not likely to take much of an impression. Jury hunkered down. “Pratt's men must have been back here. I wonder if —”

He heard a
pssst
from behind. He looked all around to determine the direction and then saw a small head dart back behind an oak.