Close Quarters (4 page)

‘And got an imperial raspberry?' said Halliday with a most unclerical grin. ‘I suppose he went all Crockford at once. He's not such a bad chap really. Very good-tempered if you rub him the right way. You know they all call him “Jumbo?” I think his trouble is really that he suffers from a bit of an inferiority complex, and that's always inclined to make you brusque to strangers, don't you think?'

Pollock, who was beginning to like Vicar Choral Halliday, agreed with this diagnosis and rose to take his leave, but was pressed to stay to tea, and as it was nearly five, and he guessed that tea at the deanery was now a thing of the past, he agreed readily. Over this meal – served by the still suspicious Biddy – he made the acquaintance of Miss Halliday, a pleasant coltish girl, a little younger than her brother, he guessed, and learned among other miscellaneous items of information that Canon Bloss was “very mysterious” but “rather a dear” (this from Miss Halliday); that Vicar Choral Prynne was universally disliked (and yet Pollock got an illogical impression that Miss Halliday rather admired him); that Malthus was notorious for always being hard up, having a large family to support; indeed, that all the vicars choral were hard up, being scandalously underpaid, whilst the canons apparently received salaries a good deal in excess of their capabilities. That the same inequality extended to the vergers; as far as Halliday knew, Appledown – for some obscure reason connected with the foundation and having its origin in the shadowy recesses of diocesan history – got considerably more than both the other vergers put together.

At this point the sound of a distant bell brought Halliday to his feet, and glancing at the dock Pollock saw that it was twenty past five.

‘Don't you go – that is unless you have to,' said his host. ‘I'm afraid I shall have to dash off. The call of duty, you know. Evensong, five-thirty. I have to sing the service; it should really be Malthus, but he had to push off, and so I'm doing it for him.'

He said nothing of a holiday curtailed by this good Samaritanism, and Pollock rather admired him for it.

‘Do you mind if I come with you?' he asked. It was an idea which had occurred to him some minutes before, that as an unobtrusive spectator at Evensong he might have a good opportunity of observing some of his prospective victims – or perhaps “clients” was the more appropriate word. He wondered for a moment whether it was quite seemly to make a stalking-horse out of a religious service, but comforted himself with the thought that the end might justify the means (and anyway there was no harm in just having a look at them).

Halliday appeared to welcome the suggestion. ‘Come and sit up in the choir,' he said, and again voicing Pollock's thoughts with disconcerting clarity he added, ‘then you'll be able to have a good squint at all of us.'

It was beginning to get dark as they left the house and cut across the road into the precincts. The light, almost transparent mist of an early autumn evening enhanced both the quiet and the beauty of the setting. For the first time Pollock saw Melchester Close as a place of tranquillity and secrecy. Lights were springing up in drawing-room windows. Eighteen households – eighteen separate little entities making up a community.

And how quiet everything was! The clack of the gate behind them as they entered the precincts sounded startlingly loud. They left the path and struck off across the grass for the south door, and their footsteps were deadened in the turf. There was a faint but pleasant smell from a bonfire of leaves in Canon Bloss' garden.

Ahead of them, through a chink in the big west door, showed a soft gleam of light, and in the stillness Pollock could hear the sound of the organist playing the voluntary. In silence he followed his guide round the south-west corner of the cathedral, into the south porch, through a swing door and into the cathedral itself.

His first impression was that the building was completely empty. Rows and rows of chairs but no congregation. Halliday seemed to find nothing surprising in this, for he plunged off up the south aisle without a word and Pollock followed. When he got closer to the choir screen he saw that his first idea had been erroneous; there was a congregation. It numbered seven. Six old ladies and one very old lady.

‘Quite a good muster for a weekday,' whispered Halliday enthusiastically as he strode across the south transept with Pollock breathlessly at his heels. ‘That's old Mrs. Judd – marvellous old lady – comes to cathedral every morning and evening. Can't hear a word, but regular as clockwork. Must leave you now – find yourself a seat in the choir.'

Pointing a vague finger towards the north he plunged into a room from which was audible a cheerful but subdued babble, and which Pollock took to be the vestry. Bereft of his guide, and feeling as an outsider that he had no right to a seat in the choir at all, he glanced anxiously round him in the gloom. Behind him was the bulk of the organ – now working up into a breathless crescendo. He advanced a few uncertain paces, passed through a gateway and found himself “within the choir.” This, as he began to realise, signified no more than the space to the east (or on the altar side) of the screen. It contained a vast number of finely carved stalls, and was absolutely empty. Pollock seated himself in comparative obscurity, opened an enormous tome on the ledge in front of him – it turned out to be a volume of Bishop Hooker's sermons – and breathed a sigh of relief. So far, so good. He felt that he had entrenched himself within the inner citadel of Melchester.

He had barely established, as it were, his
pied-à-terre
when a general movement in the body of the cathedral warned him that the choir and clergy were coming in. In front of the little procession came the sixteen choristers themselves, two by two, eight demure couples – pictures of boyish innocence, the blandness of their shining countenances and immaculately parted hair equalled only by the stiffness of their well-starched frills. Pollock felt his erstwhile suspicions to have been unworthy. How could anyone gazing on this display of composite piety entertain even for a moment the thought that they might have been mixed up in the sordid mischief of the past fortnight? How divorced they were from all notions of brutality or violence. It was only when they got closer that Pollock noted that the boy in front of the file on the left had a rich and quite unmistakable black eye.

Behind the boys came what Pollock took to be the choirmen. He had understood from the Dean that they lived in the town, and he therefore passed them over with a cursory inspection; he noted Halliday just behind them, followed at a slight interval by a thin cleric, a stouter cleric and a very stout cleric. The middle one he knew – it was the rustic and unsociable Canon Beech-Thompson. The very stout one he assumed rightly, from the Dean's description, to be Canon Bloss. The thin one in front baffled him. It might be one of the other residentiary canons – Trumpington or Fox – or it might be the Precentor.

Behind Bloss, and almost entirely obscured by him, came a verger, carrying his wand of office. Behind the verger was the Dean, and behind the Dean a second verger of such patriarchal and benevolent appearance that Pollock put him down without a second thought as Appledown. He was interested to note that the vergers, having shown the Dean and canons into their seats, removed themselves and took up their seats outside the screen, presumably to keep an eye on the seven old ladies.

Halliday was intoning the service and, thought Pollock, doing it very well. He had a fine singing voice, deep and full and confident, and the choir responded to the lead with precision. It was a pleasing scene, comfortable and comforting. His thoughts wandered. How still Canon Bloss was sitting! He did look like a graven image. There were five seats facing the altar, with their backs to the screen. The Dean had one of the two seats on the north side, and Beech-Thompson the other. Canon Bloss occupied a seat and a half out of the three on the south, the others were unoccupied. Assuming that they belonged to Trumpington and Fox, the thin man must be Precentor Hinkey. His Adam's apple had a fascinating wobble when he attempted a high note. He had a fringe of sandy hair and rimless glasses. Pollock put him down for a kindly and inoffensive soul.

Ah, the Dean had spotted him! He had wondered how long it would be before that happened. He thought he noted a faint look of disapproval on his face, and grinned to himself. So he didn't think that this was quite playing the game, didn't he? Well, that was his look out. Actually he misjudged his uncle. The Dean's irritation had been caused by the fact that he had seen one of the choristers fidgeting. In fact it looked very much as if the boy at the end of the row had passed something to his neighbour. The Dean frowned and made a mental note that he must have a word with Dr. Smallhorn.

The choir was now embarked on the one hundred and thirty-sixth psalm; the chant was one which Pollock knew and liked, and he overcame his nervousness to the extent of joining in the swinging refrain.

‘Oh give thanks unto the lord for He is gracious, and His mercy endureth for ever.'

‘The sun to rule by day,' squeaked Cantoris trebles.

‘For His mercy endureth for ever,' roared the basses.

‘The moon and the stars to govern the night,' answered Decani demurely.

‘For His mercy endureth for ever.'

Emboldened by the comforting volume of sound, Pollock tried out his reedy tenor and divided the Red Sea in two parts (‘For His mercy endureth for ever'); he also made Israel to go through the midst of it, or had started to do so when he discovered that it was a treble solo, upon which he retired behind Hooker, blushing hotly. The choir, however, were either too well mannered to take any notice, or more probably well inured to the vagaries of musical visitors, and Pollock recovered sufficiently from this contretemps in time to take a cautious seat by the waters of Babylon and hang up his harp upon a tree.

After the “Confitebor Tibi,” to a strange chant (and outside Pollock's musical compass) Canon Beech-Thompson ambled out to read the first lesson. Beyond the fact that it lay in the Sixteenth Chapter of Ezekiel and the forty-fourth verse (which he knew because he had read it in the service list) he heard little of this masterpiece of declamatory literature. It was not that Beech-Thompson was a bad reader, but he spoke in a round confident boom, and the villainous acoustics of the building did the rest. However, everybody, as far as Pollock could see, was reading the passage for themselves, except for the choristers who had relapsed into complete vacuity and an elderly tenor who appeared to be filling up his Saturday's football pool.

Magnificat followed. There was an unaccompanied treble solo on the words, ‘He remembering His mercy hath holpen His servant Israel,' and Pollock who, in his early days in London had heard most of the famous sopranos, was struck by a quality in the tone. He fumbled about for the right word and decided that it was impersonal. The words meant nothing to the boy. He was producing a note as pure and beautiful as that of a trained canary, and with as little feeling.

The Dean read the second lesson. His quieter voice suited the building. Nunc Dimittis. Prayers. No sermon, the anthem, and only one hymn. Almost before it had started the service seemed to be over, the organ boomed forth, and the choir were filing out. Pollock realised with a start that he had been too interested in the service to fulfil his real purpose of watching the participants. Technically, he reflected, a most finished performance. Spiritually it had meant nothing to him, but that was probably his fault. Did police officers have souls, anyway?

He walked slowly down the now deserted nave and out of the west door. It was dark outside, and the wind was getting up. It would probably rain before morning.

He turned to the right outside the cathedral, passed the dim bulk of the cloisters on his left and emerged from the precincts a few yards from the Dean's front gate. It was then about half-past six. Pollock felt that he had done enough for one day and dozed comfortably in front of the study fire. The Dean, when he came in a few minutes later, respected the truce and conversed until dinner on Roman history and the chances of Chelsea in the coming league contest; he seemed to be considerably better informed than Pollock on both subjects.

After dinner Pollock decided to sample the night life of Melchester, which resolved itself into a choice between (about) sixty public houses and one cinema. After visiting a few of the former he came to the conclusion that solitary beer drinking was one of the gloomiest forms of dissipation and fell back on the attractions of the screen. The film, which was modestly described as the perfect mystery-comedy-thriller, so shocked Pollock's professional eye by the improbability of its police routine that he slept soundly through the last six reels.

It must have been at about this time, or possibly a little earlier, that Mrs. Mickie had a fright. She was sitting by the fire darning a sock when she heard the front door open with a crash. The wind was now blowing great guns, and thinking that the servant had carelessly left the door unlatched she hurried into the hall. There she stopped in astonishment. Her husband – whom she had imagined to be quietly working in his study – was standing in the doorway, his hair dishevelled, a mackintosh flung loosely round his shoulders, and his face as white as death. He swayed on his feet, and for a moment she had a horrible suspicion that he had been drinking; then she realised, being a woman of some sense, that he had simply been badly frightened.

‘Why, Charles, my dear,' she said quietly, ‘whatever has happened? You look as if you'd seen a ghost.'

‘I have,' said Mickie slowly.

4

MURDER

The great quiet of Melchester Close proved unexpectedly disturbing to an ear attuned to the roar of London traffic, and his cat-nap in the cinema had made Pollock feel wakeful. In the case beside his bed he found an assortment of books on religious matters (for the Dean's clerical visitors, he guessed) mixed indiscriminately with a large number of the works of the late Edgar Wallace. After hesitating for a moment between
The Fellowship of the Frog
and
Three Devotional Aspects of Abstinence,
he selected the latter as the one which would most usefully fulfil the prime function of a bedside book and embarked on discourse number one – “Fasting as an Incentive to Thought.”

The Dean's spare-room bed was soft, and there was something very soporific in the quarterly chiming of the cathedral dock. On the last stroke of midnight he laid his book aside and turned out the light.

He remembered hearing the first quarter after twelve and noticing that the rain was now coming down steadily. His thoughts dwelt – with the sympathy of experience – on the policeman on his beat, and he snuggled down farther into bed. It seemed a very long time before the half-hour struck.

The wind was dropping off as the rain thickened, filling the long lead gutters on the cathedral roof, and running off into the overflow pipe above the cathedral engine shed where a jackdaw had started, and abandoned, an ambitious nest. The steadily rising water was filling the blocked pipe, and at the precise moment that Pollock followed the example of the wind (and himself dropped off) the overflow splashed down on to the asphalt. It fell with a muffled drumming sound on to something soft and yielding.

Pollock awoke to a clean and rain-washed morning. He found the Dean already well on with breakfast and hastened to catch up. He had already disposed in gratifying succession of a bowl of porridge, an excellent plate of ham and two boiled eggs (and was, in fact, in the very act of refusing a third) when the dining-room door opened to admit, not the trim parlour-maid, but the truculent figure of Hubbard.

The Dean looked both surprised and disapproving. The gardener, however, was plainly the bearer of such momentous tidings as to be beyond fear or favour. In a hoarse whisper – and including Pollock with a sideways movement of the head – he announced: ‘Morgan to see yer.' And in even hoarser tones he added, ‘Someone's done Appledown.'

For a few seconds he stared at them sombrely, and then, as if realising that the time had come to relinquish the stage, he opened the door wider and revealed Morgan, the junior verger, a sheepish figure, his pink youthful face glowing with exertion and excitement.

Breathlessly he confirmed and amplified Hubbard's cryptic announcement. He had been out early with a brush and a hoe cleaning the runlets round the cloister wall – as the Dean might know he did most of the small gardening jobs in the precincts – he had worked round as far as the corner – the corner that was between the east wall of the Chapter House and the north wall of the cathedral – when he had seen something lying on the ground by the engine shed door; just a black heap (followed a brief résumé of his harrowed feelings on discovering that the black heap was Appledown, very wet and indisputably dead). Being himself a keen student of detective fiction (Pollock groaned) he had refrained from touching the body, and had retraced his steps, only this time he had kept to the asphalt path, so as not to confuse his own steps with those (Pollock waited patiently to see if he would say it, and with an effort he did) – with those of the murderer.

‘Come, my man,' said the Dean keenly, ‘how did you know he'd been murdered?'

Pollock was justifiably annoyed at this usurpation of his authority. He had, of course, noticed the assumption of foul play when it had been made earlier on by Hubbard. But he had not had any intention of asking a question – not at that juncture, anyway.

‘Never mind that,' he said brusquely. ‘Show me the body, if you please.'

In answer to an inquiring look, the Dean said, ‘That's quite all right, Morgan. This is Sergeant Pollock from Scotland Yard.'

Morgan led the way out in awestruck silence. Possibly he was overcome by the speed and perspicacity of modern police methods which enable an officer to get to the scene of a crime before it is even committed.

Pollock found himself a prey to conflicting emotions. His professional instincts told him that the local authorities would have to be informed without delay; there is a form and an etiquette in these things, and he who disregards it is sowing for himself the seeds of a mighty crop of obstructiveness and local jealousy. On the other hand an opportunity of getting at a real corpse before the boots of the constabulary had trampled the ground flat was a tempting one; especially as Pollock, in common with most London men, held to the (perhaps prejudiced) view that the Yard was never called in to a provincial crime until every clue was obliterated, every suspect warned and every trail cold – until, in fact, it was too late for Scotland Yard to do anything but take the blame for another unsolved mystery.

And besides, was it not really his case, anyway? He had been called in to deal with the persecution of Appledown, and now, if one looked at it that way, the persecution had taken an eminently practical turn. But the question was whether the Chief Constable would look at it that way. There was a telephone in the hall, and by the time Pollock reached it, professional etiquette was in the ascendancy; with a deep sigh he unhooked the receiver.

A few minutes later, following Morgan, and closely followed by the Dean and Hubbard, he was rounding the north-east corner of the Chapter House. Here he paused.

What he saw was immensely gratifying to him as a policeman. It was a beautiful set of footprints. They came in a straight line across the grass from the north boundary wall and joined the path at the point where they were standing. Morgan was positive that they weren't his. His early morning weeding had taken him across the west lawn, but from that point onwards he had been on the asphalt path.

These prints were blurred and muddy (on closer inspection Pollock inclined to the view that they had been made by someone coming away from the cathedral, and not towards it as he had thought at first), and had obviously been produced by someone passing across the turf at some time after the rain had started soaking it on the previous evening. Hubbard and Morgan were dispatched post-haste to the deanery for flower-pots to cover the precious prints, and Pollock turned his attention to the body.

When he met his death Appledown had been wearing a blue Burberry-type mackintosh and a bowler hat, which had rolled off his head and lay on the path beside him. The cause of death was obvious. What had once been the back of Appledown's head was now nothing but a mess. Pollock felt cautiously with his fingers. The bone yielded in all directions. A powerful blow, he thought. There had been a good deal of bleeding, and the rainwater had added to the mess.

He raised the head gently and examined with interest a rough scrape on the cheek and chin; the eyes were closed, and Pollock, who had seen a good deal of violent dissolution, was surprised by the benignity of the verger's expression. Replacing the head, he got both hands under the body and lifted it slightly on one side. It struck him that it was quite dry underneath, and he was about to roll the body still farther on to its side when a loud and authoritative voice announced: ‘Here, you mustn't do that, young man.'

The local police had arrived.

The ‘homicide squad,' as the Dean mentally dubbed them, consisted of a solid-looking sergeant, a solid-looking constable, a thin gentleman with a toothbrush moustache and a motor coat (police doctor, diagnosed Pollock correctly) and a photographer. Pollock introduced himself briefly. He felt that he could spare any longer explanations until the inevitable hour arrived when he had to tackle the Chief Constable.

Sergeant Parks and Constable Potter accepted his credentials affably, but he fancied they looked relieved when he suggested that he would leave them to get on with the job whilst he “just had a poke round.” This consisted of a minute inspection of the surrounding paths and lawn. Apart from the tracks which Hubbard and Morgan were now busily covering with a selection of pots, dishes, and soap-boxes (to the amazement of MacFisheries and the Home and Colonial, who had been arrested by this unusual spectacle on their morning delivery round), the results were entirely negative.

He went back and found the photographer concluding his task with three close-ups of the wound. Sergeant Parks was seated on an upturned section of drain-pipe complacently finishing his notes whilst Constable Potter drove in skewers to mark the positions after the body had been removed. This crucial operation was performed soon after his arrival, and the mortal remains of Appledown were laid on the Dean's garden truck for removal to the police ambulance and thence to the station mortuary. This part of the job the sergeant handed over to Constable Potter; he himself seemed to be in no hurry to leave the scene of the crime. Reinforcements in the shape of two more uniformed policemen arrived at this juncture and were posted – one at the corner of the Chapter House and the other at the south-east corner of the cathedral, to ward off casual intruders. The sergeant reseated himself on the drain-pipe and watched Pollock, who was making a second and even more thorough search of the terrain. As he watched he sucked hard at his pencil. It seemed to afford him some comfort.

The engine shed outside which the body had been found was the one which housed the little electric engine which supplied the power for the cathedral organ. It was an ugly plank and studding affair – plain twentieth century and contrasting oddly with the Gothic pile against which it rested – and it occupied the angle formed by the north wall of the cathedral and the east wall of the transept. The whole arrangement formed a narrow cul-de-sac to which the lower bulk of the Chapter House made a third side. It was almost entirely floored with what is commonly called asphalt but is really only tarred chips. The exception was a narrow strip along the wall – though it was not quite clear whether this had been designed as a flower-bed or was merely the result of the workmen running short of material before finishing the job.

‘Come and have a look at this,' said Pollock. The two sergeants stared for some time in silence at his discovery; it was nothing very exciting – sixteen little holes had been made in this patch of hard damp earth. They were close together, almost up against the shed, about an inch deep and a third of an inch wide. They looked fresh.

‘Very odd,' said Sergeant Parks who clearly made nothing of it. ‘Very odd indeed.' He returned to his seat. ‘In fact,' he concluded, ‘you might call the whole thing very odd.'

‘Quite a rum go,' agreed Pollock. ‘Anything particular occur to you?'

‘Well, now,' said Sergeant Parks, not ill-pleased at such unexpected deference: ‘The body, very wet on top, very dry underneath, in a manner of speaking. And the ground quite dry too. Which suggests to me,' he went on kindly, in case Pollock had missed his point, ‘as if the poor gentleman was killed afore it came on to rain.'

‘A sound conclusion, I think,' agreed Pollock. ‘And that, I take it, would give us some time about eight o'clock yesterday evening as the latest possible.'

‘A little after eight,' amended the sergeant. ‘Say ten past.'

‘Another thing,' went on Pollock. ‘Didn't it strike you that the body was very wet? Quite uncommonly wet, I mean – especially as it was lying in such a sheltered place.'

‘It was a very wet night,' said the sergeant. ‘Very wet indeed. I was out in it,' he added.

‘Rotten luck,' said Pollock absently. His gaze was fixed on the drain-pipe with its overhanging spout. ‘If you were to give me a leg-up do you think I could manage to get on to the roof of the shed?'

The sergeant acquiesced with a dubious grunt to this proposed acrobatic feat, and a minute later Pollock was balancing on his broad shoulders; after a perilous wobble and a frantic grasp he drew himself up, and was standing on the flat roof of the engine shed. From here he was able to get a very satisfactory view of the gutter and the top of the pipe. The mystery of Appledown's extreme dampness was a mystery no longer.

‘Chock full of sticks,' he shouted down. ‘Nest of some sort, I think. The poor chap must have been lying under a regular shower bath half the night.'

‘Ah,' said Sergeant Parks, gaping up at his colleague, ‘smart work that.' Thoughtfully he spat out a twig which Pollock's foot had dislodged into his open mouth.

‘It wasn't entirely guesswork,' explained Pollock when he had safely regained terra firma. ‘There's a sort of damp mark on the stone which often means a blocked pipe.'

‘Ah,' said Sergeant Parks. He reseated himself on his favourite seat and continued to ruminate.

Here Pollock left him. He felt that the time had come – in fact, might well be over-past – when he would have to explain himself and his doings to the Chief Constable. Of one thing he was determined; no amount of “choking off,” nothing short of a direct order from headquarters would make him leave go. The whole affair was most interesting. An assassin who walked across the grass backwards, clothes which were too wet, and a bowler hat which was much too dry. Sixteen little holes in the ground. A case after his own heart. He hoped the Chief Constable would not prove too impossible.

‘I must confess,' said Colonel Brabington (late Indian Army and present Chief Constable of Melchester) in one of his less affable tones of voice, ‘I must confess that at the moment it passes the bounds of my imagination – my very limited imagination – to discover how you came into this case at all.'

In moments of irritation he was apt to indulge in an almost Chinese form of self-depreciation.

‘Staying with my uncle, the Dean, you know,' explained Pollock patiently for the third time, ‘and he asked me – quite unofficially, of course – to look into the question of these anonymous letters. Quite unofficially, of course.'