Into the Valley of Death (14 page)

And, Miss Unwin realised, drunk though he had been till a minute before, he was now stone-cold sober.

At the doorway, which Mr. Heavitree continued to block, he came to a halt.

“You devils,” he said. “You utter devils.”

His face under the thick thatch of dark hair was filled with cold anger.

Will he say more? Miss Unwin asked herself. Is he going to break now, as we calculated?

But the shock they had administered seemed to have done its work too well. It had indeed sobered the drunken farmer, put him in mind of just what he had done and what he could be made to suffer because of it.

“Get out of my way,” he snarled at Mr. Heavitree. “Get out of my way, now and for ever.”

Mr. Heavitree stepped aside. Arthur Burch gave him a single glare of bitter hatred and then, pushing past Miss Unwin in a wave of brandy-soaked breath, he marched out into the road.

“You let him go?” Miss Unwin said.

“Oh, yes, I let him go,” Mr. Heavitree answered. “It hasn’t worked, you see. He won’t talk now. But in time he will. Tomorrow, when the brandy fire’s gone out.”

“Yes. Yes, I suppose so. But—but, Mr. Heavitree, what about tonight? When he gets home and begins to think? Won’t he …? Mightn’t he …? Mr. Heavitree, he has a shotgun, you know.”

The old detective looked grim. “Yes,” he said slowly. “Yes, damn it, he might.”

Without a moment’s thought, Miss Unwin wheeled round and ran out of the house into the road.

She saw that Arthur Burch had found his horse peacefully tugging at a clump of grass not far from the post he had failed to tie it to when he had arrived. He had clambered up onto
the cart and now, with no more than a muttered oath, started his obedient animal off on its way back to his distant cottage.

Miss Unwin did not hesitate. She ran. She ran as hard as she could go and in a few strides caught up the slowly moving cart. Again she did not hesitate. She seized the backboard and heaved herself up. Her scrabbling legs found somewhere to put themselves. She looked ahead. Seated like a lifeless sack on the seat in front, Arthur Burch had taken no notice whatsoever of the swing and sway of the cart as she had got onto it.

For a minute and then another, she clung where she was. The horse plodded forward through the soft summer darkness. Arthur Burch sat slumped behind it.

Miss Unwin hauled herself farther up. She could see right into the cart now. It was a quarter full of hay, hay that a better farmer would long ago have cleared out from it.

Cautiously, never taking her eyes off the slouching figure in front, careless of her skirts, Miss Unwin got first one leg and then the other over the backboard. She crouched low. Still the farmer was oblivious of her presence. She slid down till she was lying full-length at the back of the old cart. With care, she began gathering the hay in it towards her. It smelt abominable. She paid no attention. In some five minutes she had more or less covered herself with the wretched, half-rotten stuff.

Then she lay still as the cart slowly jogged its way along towards the isolated cottage.

If when Arthur Burch arrived there his conscience had emerged enough from the alcoholic fumes that had once more doused it, she intended to be there, close to him, ready to wrest his gun from his hands if that was the way his thoughts took him. And then she would make him confess.

Farmer Burch’s old horse jogged on through the summer night. Miss Unwin lay on her back on the floor of the cart, the acid-smelling hay over her in a prickly layer.

Arthur Burch himself seemed locked again in the state of heavy drunkenness he had been in before Mr. Heavitree had given him the fright which, unfortunately for their plans, had shocked him into soberness. He swayed from side to side up on the seat, and from time to time Miss Unwin caught muttered words.

“Lady writer. Lady writer. I knew she … Should have put some shot into … Ha, ha. That would’ve … Damned policeman, why couldn’t …? Should be in his grave. In his grave, in his grave. Peace. Got to have … Like to’ve seen her full of shot. Ha! Ha, ha.”

But carefully though Miss Unwin listened to these ramblings, Arthur Burch never once referred in any way to what it was that had caused them: the perjured evidence he had given at the assizes.

No doubt, he was still gripped by a fierce intention never to admit to his crime, and this was preventing him even in his state of drunkenness from speaking aloud as much as a single word that might give away his secret.

At last the horse turned at the great oak spreading over the whole road at the start of the lane leading to the farm. Miss Unwin, cautiously raising her head from its covering of black hay, saw the cottage starkly silhouetted against the starlit sky. She continued to lie where she was. It did not seem likely that the drunken farmer would look into the back of the cart
when they arrived. She calculated that, if she wanted to make sure he did not use his shotgun on himself, she could do no better than stay still until he had left the cart.

But what she had failed to take into account was what would happen when he took the horse out of the shafts. This, after much cursing and swearing in the darkness, he eventually managed to do.

With a sudden crashing swing, the cart upended itself. Lying near its back, Miss Unwin was not hurled very far by the upheaval, but, banged hard against the backboard, she had to clench her teeth grimly to prevent herself crying out.

Lying in an undignified heap at the bottom of the upended cart, she heard Arthur Burch give his freed horse a slap that sent it trotting softly off into the field beside the garden. Then, muttering incoherently, the farmer made his way towards the house.

Miss Unwin rose from her sprawled position. Her left knee was shooting with pain, and the whole of her left side felt battered. But she managed to get to her feet and extricate herself from the cart without making too much noise.

She drew in a deep breath and peered into the darkness. She thought she could make out that Arthur Burch had pushed open the door of the cottage. No doubt, it was left unlocked in this remote part—and with, she remembered, his old mother in occupation.

Then she heard distinctly the sound of a match being struck. A light sprang up where she had thought the open door was. She crept forward.

In the passageway of the cottage she saw the farmer putting, with wavering hand, the match-flame to a candle standing on a bench just inside the door.

What would he do next? Would he stagger off to bed? Or would he make his way into the kitchen? And if he did, would he see the shotgun in the corner where he had seized it to threaten her? And then …? Then would he attempt to take his own life? And would she be able to rush in, snatch the
weapon from him, and force him afterwards to say who it was who had persuaded him to give his fake testimony?

Getting hold of the gun, she thought, should be within her powers. If she acted with resolution. Arthur Burch was so drunk that he would scarcely be able to resist, or be quick enough to swing the gun round to confront her once more.

She advanced boldly across the tussocky grass in front of the cottage.

She was within three yards of the door when, with another oath, Arthur Burch kicked it shut.

Miss Unwin stepped quickly back so as to get a good view of the whole of the cottage and its windows. Would the light show itself in the kitchen on the right, or the bedroom she had glimpsed on her earlier visit on the left?

She waited.

In the darkness a big night-beetle went droning by.

And the light, somewhat to her surprise, appeared in one of the two windows of the cottage’s upper storey. So apparently that better-kept bedroom she had seen did not belong to the tenant.

Well, she thought, at least he has not gone to the kitchen. So I shall not, I trust, have to wrest that gun from him. And, alas, I shall not be able to force a confession from him now.

She stayed where she was in the neglected patch of garden, staring up at the light in the window. Before long she actually saw Arthur Burch outlined against it. He tossed away somewhere the old hat he had managed to keep on his head. Then he took off his jacket and evidently allowed it to slip down onto the floor. Next he moved away from the window, and at last the candle was extinguished.

Miss Unwin remained on the watch for almost half an hour more, occasionally looking up at the window. But there was no sign of activity behind its dark panes. For the rest of the time, she busied herself in brushing from her dress any still-clinging pieces of rotten hay. But at last she felt it safe to set off again on the weary walk back to Chipping Compton.

Limping along, she met Mr. Heavitree about half-way, and felt grateful at once that, tired as he must be, he had plodded off in search of her.

“All’s well,” she called as soon as she recognised in the light of the newly risen moon the familiar figure. “He’s safely in bed, and I dare say with all that drink in him he’ll be there well into tomorrow morning.”

“Good,” said Mr. Heavitree. “A fine piece of work, my dear. I’m too old and too portly to go chasing after a cart the way you did. But it’s the better for being done. And tomorrow you and I will present ourselves again at Master Burch’s. If he feels half as ill as I think he will, he won’t be in a state to resist a few sharp questions then.”

With this comforting thought, Miss Unwin managed to get herself back to the Rising Sun in good spirits. She tumbled into bed filled with a determination to be up early next day.

But she did not wake, in fact, until there came a vigorous tapping on her door.

“Come in,” she called.

It was Betsey.

“Sorry to wake you so early, miss,” she said. “Only, the gentleman was so earnest.”

“What gentleman?” Miss Unwin said, groping for her watch, which she had laid on the floor beside the bed.

She saw that it was just after six.

“I think his name be Mr. Heavitree, miss,” Betsey answered.

“And he wants me to come down to him?”

“That he do.”

A sudden terrible thought came to Miss Unwin.

“He was in earnest, you say? Was he very urgent? Did he say that—that something had happened?”

“Oh, no, miss. It was just that he said you wouldn’t mind being wakened, though it was late when you got to bed.”

“Very well,” Miss Unwin answered, relieved. “Would you tell him I shall be down in ten minutes?”

“That I will.”

Betsey turned to the door. But at it she paused and looked back at Miss Unwin, who had begun to throw back the bedcovers.

“Oh, miss,” she said.

Miss Unwin looked at her sharply. “Yes? Yes, what is it?”

“No, nothing, miss. You’ll be wanting to get down to see Mr. Heavitree.”

“I am. But if you have anything of importance you want to say to me …”

“No. No, miss. It ain’t so important. Not truly.”

“Very well, then.”

Betsey closed the door, leaving Miss Unwin thoughtful. But she had no time now to consider what in all probability was only a young girl’s fancy of some sort. Hastily she went to the washstand, poured cold water into its basin, and washed.

She was down to see Mr. Heavitree in just less than her ten minutes.

“Mr. Heavitree, there’s nothing …?”

“No, my dear. But I got to thinking as I went back to my sister’s last night after seeing you to here that if perchance our friend should wake early, he might—you know.”

“Yes, he might.”

“So I’ve come with a little trap I’ve borrowed, and we can be at the cottage in ten minutes.”

“I’m glad,” Miss Unwin said.

The trap, with a neat, fresh-looking horse in its shafts, was waiting outside. She climbed in and took her seat next to Mr. Heavitree. He touched the horse with the end of his whip and they were off at a sharp trot.

But, as they went up the lane leading to the cottage, they saw that they were not the first people to call there that day.

Standing in the garden, looking up into the blue morning sky, was a police constable and outside there was a smart
wagonette, its horse tethered to one of the posts of the sagging wooden gate.

Mr. Heavitree whipped up their own animal and, as soon as they were within calling distance, shouted out to the constable.

“It’s Grigson, isn’t it? You remember me? Mr. Heavitree, late of the Metropolitan. What’s happening here?”

“It’s Farmer Burch, Mr. Heavitree,” the constable answered. “Shot himself, he has. Nasty business.”

Miss Unwin and Mr. Heavitree looked at one another.

Slowly, Mr. Heavitree got down from the trap and tied the horse’s reins to the other post of the broken-down gate.

“When did this happen?” he asked.

“Lord knows just when, Mr. Heavitree. Dr. Podgers is looking at the body now. He came with Inspector Whatmough.”

“Did he? And how did you get to know about this, so early in the day?”

“Ah, that was young Tom Featherby. Helps at the farm here, when Arthur Burch thinks o’ something for him to do.”

“I see. Well, I’ll go in. I may have something to tell Mr. Whatmough.”

“I s’pose that’ll be all right,” the constable said doubtfully.

Mr. Heavitree gave him no time for second thoughts.

Neither did Miss Unwin.

She had got down from the trap while Mr. Heavitree had been asking his questions and had gone unobtrusively up the weed-strewn path to the cottage door. Now she simply followed Mr. Heavitree in.

The first thing she saw, or rather heard, was an old woman sitting on the bottom stair at the far end of the entrance passage moaning to herself in quiet desperation.

Arthur Burch’s mother, of course, she thought.

She went forward to give her what comfort she could.

But, as she did so, she could not help taking one long
careful glance into the kitchen where, she knew, that shotgun had rested in a corner.

She saw that Arthur Burch was lying on his back in the middle of the floor with his head an appalling mess of blood. In his right hand there still lay the gun, which evidently he had put to his face before pulling the trigger.

The doctor was kneeling beside the body, and behind him there stood Inspector Whatmough, smart in his uniform.