Casual Slaughters E-Book

James Quince

• Herausgeber: Librorium Editions
• Kategorie: Krimi
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Beschreibung

It had been one of those singing days when spring is turning into summer, and lifting every muddy lane and ragged hedge into radiance. All day the sun had shone with approval upon Bishop’s Pecheford; all day the village, as quiet and uneventful as its name, had basked in warmth and virtue.
The members of the Parochial Church Council straggled into the dingy schoolroom; as they crossed the threshold they were glorified in the red searchlight of sunset that slanted through the west window and lit up each newcomer with an apparent gaiety better suited to a funeral or a whist drive than to a business meeting.
We had been summoned for seven o’clock. The Rector, who had been looking impatiently at his watch, called upon us at ten minutes past the hour to begin the meeting with prayer. We stood up in silence. The Rector does not fire off collects at us on these occasions; he suggests to us what we shall pray about and leaves us to it. The room was very still.

Leseprobe

CASUAL SLAUGHTERS

JAMES QUINCE

© 2023 Librorium Editions

ISBN : 9782385743178

CASUAL SLAUGHTERS

ONE

The Fateful Resolution

TWO

The Dead Hand

THREE

A Fat Man in Bed

FOUR

Enter Inspector Lawless

FIVE

The Flower Show

SIX

Tracing the Taxi

SEVEN

An Impostor

EIGHT

The Coming of the Fear

NINE

The P.C.C. Plans

TEN

A Legacy from Scotland Yard

ELEVEN

What the Gardener Knew

TWELVE

The P.C.C. as Sleuth

THIRTEEN

Ministering Angel

FOURTEEN

The Trouser-Leg Clue

FIFTEEN

By One and Two and Three

SIXTEEN

The Final Session

SEVENTEEN

Mounds For Ever!

Let me speak, to the yet unknowing world,

How these things come about: So shall you hear

Of accidental judgments, casual slaughters;

Of deaths put on by cunning, and forc’d cause;

And, in this upshot, purposes mistook

Fall’n on the inventors’ heads: all this can I

Truly deliver.

Hamlet, ACT V., Sc. 2.

ONE

The Fateful Resolution

It had been one of those singing days when spring is turning into summer, and lifting every muddy lane and ragged hedge into radiance. All day the sun had shone with approval upon Bishop’s Pecheford; all day the village, as quiet and uneventful as its name, had basked in warmth and virtue.

The members of the Parochial Church Council straggled into the dingy schoolroom; as they crossed the threshold they were glorified in the red searchlight of sunset that slanted through the west window and lit up each newcomer with an apparent gaiety better suited to a funeral or a whist drive than to a business meeting.

We had been summoned for seven o’clock. The Rector, who had been looking impatiently at his watch, called upon us at ten minutes past the hour to begin the meeting with prayer. We stood up in silence. The Rector does not fire off collects at us on these occasions; he suggests to us what we shall pray about and leaves us to it. The room was very still.

Someone opened the door and, obviously intending to wait reverently upon the mat until prayers were over, pulled it gently back again without shutting it. It was Mrs. Tawton—I should know anywhere that carrying whisper, which mingled strangely with our intercessions: “Worms? My dear, don’t talk to me about worms. I never see anything like what they are this year. My garden … not worms? … oh, your Beryl! … what? them worms? … Ah! Well now, you take and get some of that stuff Miss Chawleigh’s got to the shop. It’s them little black bottles up over the telegram forms. My Eliza was that bad, poor child, and I just gave her one dose…”

The whisper was lost as we joined in the Lord’s Prayer. Then we sat down and Mrs. Tawton came in with Mrs. Hemyock, mother of the afflicted Beryl.

“I call on the Secretary to read the minutes of the last meeting,” said the Rector.

I am the Secretary. My name is Blundell. An axed Lieutenant-Commander who lives precariously upon Rhode Island Reds has so much experience of keeping accounts without balances that I could not refuse to take on one more when I was appointed.

I read the minutes.

“Any points arising…?” asked the Rector.

“Yes, sir.” It was Mr. Churchwarden Bradworthy who spoke. “I never miss—I’m not like some—but the Commander didn’t read out my name.”

“Sorry,” said I. “My mistake, I’m sure.”

“Mistake!” cried Mrs. Tawton. “There warn’t no mistake. Farmer Bradworthy, you warn’t here last time.”

A murmur of assent encouraged Mrs. Tawton.

“You warn’t,” she repeated.

“I was then,” said the Farmer crossly. “I call to mind that evening well; I made a mistake in the time and com’d here half an hour too early, so I went up to the Shoe, and when I got back you was all coming away. But I was here, and my name ought to a’ bin down.”

There was a pause for a moment while we all digested the implications of the Churchwarden’s claim.

“I don’t see that,” said Caleb Murcom slowly. “Look ye here now—”

Caleb was not allowed to develop his argument. Mrs. Tawton saw it coming and give it an edge that the slow and kindly Caleb would never have added.

“Putt down Farmer Bradworthy,” she said to me, “putt down old Puddicomb and that reskel Tabb while you’re about it. I’ll wager they was at the Shoe. Ain’t that right, Farmer?”

“There ain’t no call—”

“Address the Chair, please, ladies and gentlemen,” said the Rector. “We will ask the Secretary to make a note on the minutes that Mr. Churchwarden Bradworthy was in attendance. That will, I think, be the correct phrase. These difficulties will not arise in future if we are all punctual. Is it your pleasure that the amended minutes be signed as correct?”

Caleb was beginning to murmur again. “I don’t see—” but the Rector affected not to hear, glanced at the upheld hands, said “Carried,” and launched the business of the evening without delay.

It concerned the condition of the churchyard, a wilderness of nettles varied by cheap marble monuments of the sort that come over from Italy as ballast in colliers. In theory the yard had in past years been kept in order by successive rectors; now under modern legislation the care of it had devolved upon the Council. I had got up the legal position and explained it.

“I don’t see that,” said Caleb Murcom. “Supposing as how passon had a mind to putt ens ship in?”

“I don’t think we need go into that,” said the Rector. “I don’t keep sheep.”

“No, zur,” Caleb said, shaking his head in the agonies of thought and putting up a hand to steady it as though it might shake too fast. “You haven’t no ship; us all knows that. But I mind when I was a boy passon Crook putt ens ship in. Look ye now, zur, suppose when you’m dead another passon puts ens ship in; what’ll us do then?”

“Turn ’em out,” the Rector answered. “Do whatever you like with them. I must impress on you that you—the Council—are entirely responsible for the churchyard. You can have it as it is now, a disgrace to the county, or you can make it as beautiful as your own gardens. But it’s up to you. I’ve no more responsibility than any of you.”

Perhaps of all the revolutionary changes of modern times none had ever impressed the members of the Council as much as this. Farmer Bradworthy stirred uneasily in his chair.

“Do you mean, we’ve got to pay for keeping the place vitty?”

“Certainly.”

Unexpectedly Mrs. Hemyock, a silent member, who prides herself on being practical, joined in. Mrs. Hemyock is a newcomer; no relatives of hers are buried at Bishop’s Pecheford.

“I think them as has graves ought to mind them.”

There was a horrified silence, broken at last by Farmer Bradworthy.

“I don’t mind minding my own graves, and I suppose I’ve as many in the churchyard as anyone; but I won’t pay for other people’s, and that’s flat.”

“What I think we have to consider,” the Rector put in, “is that even if all of us in the village did our duty by our own there’d still be many neglected graves. Mustn’t we take the churchyard as a whole and improve it?”

“That’s right,” said Mrs. Tawton. “Let’s have a whist drive and dance. Everybody would come for the churchyard.”

“Ah!” added Caleb, brightening up. “Us’ll have skittling for a pig, too, and bowling for a duck. If someone will give us a pig and a duck, that is.”

“I don’t mind if I give a pig,” said Farmer Bradworthy.

“Perhaps, ladies and gentlemen—” the Rector began: a portent stopped him. We had carried on the discussion, after our usual custom, seated; now Farmer Knowstone—“know” rhymes with plough—rose slowly to his feet and stood looking gloomily at a map on the wall facing him. He is the head of the important family of Knowstones of Mummybottom, as his farm is surprisingly called.

“We gave a duck three year agone,” he said solemnly, “and it were not appreciated.” Still gazing fixedly at the map Mr. Knowstone sat down.

“Ladies—” began the Rector again, only to meet with the same fate.

“I’ll give a duck,” exclaimed Mrs. Tawton scornfully, creating a sensation due to our knowledge that she does not keep ducks and would therefore have to buy one in order to encourage the bowlers.

“Ladies and gentlemen”—at last the Rector got his word in—“without in any way reflecting on whist drives and dances, which are very well in their place, do you think that they are quite the right means of raising money for the churchyard?”

“Us’ll have skittling and bowling too,” expostulated Caleb.

“Well, I wonder whether they are quite suitable, either?”

The meeting, not quite seeing what the Rector was driving at, sat still and stared at him. Whist drives and dances, bowling for ducks and skittling for pigs, are the four orthodox methods of giving to good causes. One can of course raise money by means of draws, when so many as a hundred threepenny tickets may be sold, each representing the hundredth chance of obtaining some object worth half a crown; but it is known that the Rector has an objection to our having draws for church funds. There are also church collections, but they are something of a formality and have no part in a scheme of serious giving. We eyed the Rector warily: surely he was not going to take the same line about dances and ducks as he had taken about draws? We waited for an explanation. It came.

“We shall all be corpses soon,” said the Rector genially, “and I shouldn’t like to think when I’m dead that people can’t keep my grave tidy without playing games over me.”

“Us don’t play to churchyard,” objected the puzzled Caleb. The others, however, appreciated the finer points of the argument, and were impressed.

“What do ’ee think to do with the yard, then?” someone asked.

“What I should like to see,” the Rector answered, “is a place as well kept as any of our own gardens. The mounds levelled so that a lawnmower could run over the grass, the edges clipped, the shrubs put in order.”

The sexton, Mr. Barlow, is not a member of the Council but attends in an advisory capacity. He thought this to be a suitable moment for advising.

“Ay, ’tis they mounds,” he said, “my liddle scythe, I cut he short to get round ’em like, but it takes howers and howers.”

There was a murmur of assent, broken sharply by Mrs. Hemyock.

“I shouldn’t like my mounds to be done away with.”

“You ain’t got no mounds,” retorted Caleb.

“Not here, I haven’t, but my family all has mounds.”

“Let ’em,” said Mrs. Tawton tartly. “It’s no business of ours what mounds your family has to Bideford or Barnstaple or wherever it is. I say Rector’s right. Silly things. Let Mr. Barlow do away with them.”

“We shall have all the village atop of us if we do,” said the gloomy Mr. Knowstone.

“We must not let that weigh with us,” the Rector said; “we must try to do the right thing whether it is popular or not. But of course no one would suggest that we should remove mounds when the relatives of the deceased wish that they should remain.”

“Shiftin’ mounds won’t cost much,” said Farmer Bradworthy thoughtfully.

“Ay,” Mr. Knowstone agreed. “One thing at a time, I say. If we settle about mounds today that’ll leave us something over for next time.”

“Is it your pleasure then,” asked the Rector, “that we defer the question of further and more expensive improvements? Agreed?”

There was no doubt of our complete unanimity on this point. The horrible danger of being called upon to give actual money for the churchyard had been passed and there was a general sense of relief.

“What’ll my orders be, then?” Mr. Barlow asked.

“We’d better have a resolution to put the matter in order: ‘That the Sexton be instructed to keep new graves level and to remove old mounds when no possible objection can arise’—something like that, I should think. If that resolution meets the case will someone move it Tawton? Thank you. Mrs. Tawton moves—Mr. Bradworthy seconds—those in favour … those against … carried unanimously … no, I beg your pardon, carried with one dissentient. That closes our business, ladies and gentlemen. We will stand…”

This is rather the Rector’s way. He exercises great patience with us during the earlier stages of meetings; then he gets hungry and the thought of dinner intervenes to cut our proceedings short. Otherwise I don’t see why they should ever end.

Barlow, as a colleague, waited for a moment of confidential talk when the others went home, and we walked down the hill together.

“These new-fangled Councils do seem to be so much good as a rotten potato. I likes to get my orders from passon, and I likes to give my orders to the rest of ’em. There’s that Widow Widgery come yesterday bothering about where her grave is to be, and her not sick yet, let alone dead. I says to her, ‘Ye’ll lay where you’re told,’ I says. They mounds now. There’s only one of them that’s been putt of late years that I can shift without someone making a hullabaloo. That’s old Sarah Mant’s. Single old lady, she were, not related to none of us. No one will worry about her.”

“Buried up by the south door, wasn’t she?” I said. “Under the tower?”

“That’s her. If I get that mound level there’ll be quite a bit of flat just there. I’ll do it tomorrow. Good night, zur.”

“Good night, Barlow.”

TWO

The Dead Hand

I had meant to run through some bills with the Rector after the Council Meeting but there had been no time, so I looked in on the following morning. We were sitting in the study with our minds on coke, when suddenly there was a noise in the hall and Barlow burst in unannounced. Ordinarily he is a wholesome-looking ruddy person; on this occasion his face was a blotchy white and streaming with sweat. He stood at the door staring at the Rector and gasping as if he had run a mile instead of a hundred yards, which is the distance between the rectory and the church.

“What on earth’s the matter, Barlow?” the Rector exclaimed, while I got up and put a hand on the man’s arm, fearing that he had some sort of fit.

“O zur! O zur!” Barlow got out at last in a cracked voice. “Come ’ee quick and exterpize her!”

“Sit down. Calm yourself. I can’t exorcize people in such a hurry as that. Has to be done with deliberation, you know bell, book and candle… There, that’s better”—as Barlow sank into a chair—“now take your time and tell us all about it.”

“’Tis Sarah Mant. Her’ve come out of her coffin.”

“Come out of her coffin?” The Rector took this surprising news with complete calm. “Come out of her coffin? Well, well, she shouldn’t have done that. What makes you think Sarah has taken such a rash step? Is she walking?”

The matter-of-fact atmosphere of the Rector’s study was having a marked effect on Barlow and he was able now to give us his story.

“’Tis like this, zur. My orders is to level they mounds where nobody minds. So I thinks to myself this morning I’ll go and level Sarah Mant’s, because nobody don’t mind her. Well, I takes off the turves and puts them alongside and then I levels the mound. I was going to putt the turves back and I see there’s nobut clay for them to lay on. So I thinks to myself I’ll take out half a spit of clay and putt in a bit of loam for the grass to grow in, and when I puts in my spade it comes up against something. I don’t know what ’tis but I eases it up and it’s a hand. But I take my Bible oath I putt Sarah five foot farther down than that. You remember, zur?”

“I remember very well. It was in that wet spell, and you had some trouble with the water at the bottom, didn’t you?”

“Yes, zur!”

“Well, no one can possibly say it’s your fault if Sarah has come up. Let me see: how long ago was it?”

“’Twas in September. I mind because my nephew to Barnstaple moved that Michaelmas and I was going to give him a hand with his things but I had to stay because of digging Sarah’s grave.”

“Eight months ago. Well, Blundell, do you think, now Barlow is rested, we’d better go round and have a look?”

“I’m ready,” said I. I was indeed more than ready, having the seaman’s affection for the supernatural and being considerably less hardened than the Rector to the village habit of invoking it.

“Come along then,” said he.

• • • • • •

A late fourteenth-century church and an early nineteenth-century rectory adjoin each other at Bishop’s Pecheford: their shapes are different but their cubic capacity must be about the same. A park-like garden matches the size of the house. Along the churchyard wall is an avenue of evergreen oaks known as ‘them furriners’ which add to the untidiness of the graves by shedding enormous quantities of stiff little leaves in early summer.

We took the path by the lawn, went through a gate at the side of the churchyard, and up to the south door by the tower. There the soil from the mound had been scattered over the surrounding grass; a parallelogram of bare earth marked the grave of the late Miss Mant. Something irregular stuck up from the clay. Barlow took up a strategic position behind me; the Rector bent down and moved the object delicately with a pencil which he took from his pocket. He then wiped the pencil on the grass and stood up.

“I apologize, Barlow,” he said. “I confess that I thought you’d made a mistake. You were of course perfectly right about the facts, although perhaps you were hasty in your explanations. I doubt whether Sarah is to blame in the matter. But before we go further we must have other assistance. Does anyone else know of this?”

“No, zur. I came straight to you when I found ’er.”

“Very well. On no account mention it to anyone. For the moment it would perhaps be as well to throw a tarpaulin over the grave. You might get one now, would you?”

Barlow went off to the sexton’s den on the north side of the church. The faint air of weariness which one associates with the Rector was completely dissipated.

“A man’s hand, Blundell! We must have the doctor and the police before we touch it. I think not Beer: he’s quite a good village policeman but too stupid for this. I’ll get on to the Chief Constable and see if he can come here at once and bring an inspector or a detective with him. Will you go and secure the doctor?”

“Right,” said I.

“Tell him we’ll let him know when the police will be here.”

By this time Barlow had returned carrying the tarpaulin that he uses for covering graves which have to be dug in wet weather. We laid it carefully over Sarah Mant and her unknown visitor.

“That’ll do for the present,” said the Rector. “We’ll be back soon. Don’t lose sight of the grave, Barlow. If you do a job on this side of the yard you can keep an eye on it.”

“Yes, zur,” said the reluctant sexton, who evidently wished to be anywhere else and immediately went off to trim the hedge as far away from Miss Mant as he could go.

I found the doctor just preparing to start out on his rounds. He is a locum tenens, and much more popular in the village than our regular medico, who had to go away for a year for his health. The people say that he is a smart man with medicines and praise his homely manner. Mr. Bradworthy told me that as soon as he came into the house he made them all as comfortable as if he’d been a farmer himself. He seems to have wandered over a considerable portion of the known world, and says he prefers doing temporary work to settling down in one place. He impresses us all by mixing up a different medicine for each patient, whereas our own doctor has a red one for all affections of the chest and throat and a green one for stomach trouble. This is convenient, because often it enables parents to send a child to ask for a ‘bottle of the red’, or hand in an empty jar to be filled with ‘the green’ without troubling the doctor to come round. Also, as Caleb pointed out to me once, “Faces be different like, but one stummick be the spit of another stummick,” so why have different medicines? It is something of a compliment to the locum tenens that notwithstanding logic and convenience most of us are on his side in the matter.

The doctor’s name is Williams; he has a somewhat dissipated air but his conduct gives us no reason to suppose that he has earned it. My only objection to him is that he is too hilarious for my liking and has acquired in his travels in America the habit of addressing people by official titles one step higher than their rank.

He was tightening plugs when I arrived and waved the tommy-bar in greeting.

“Hullo, Captain!” he cried. “You don’t mean to tell me that you want doctoring?”

“Not I: fit as a fiddle. I’ve a message from the Rector.”

“Nothing the matter with him, is there?” The doctor turned his back as he spoke and gave a final twist to the fourth plug.

“No. But they’ve found a corpse in the churchyard.”

Dr. Williams’s hand and tool were still for a moment: then he burst into a roar of laughter. I could see no cause for merriment.

“You Pecheford people will be the death of me,” he said, wiping his eyes. “A corpse in the churchyard! Where on earth do you expect to find corpses if not in churchyards?”

“Yes, but this isn’t an ordinary corpse, it’s—”

“An extraordinary one, eh? Come in and have a drink and tell me all about it.”

So saying the doctor took me by the arm—a gesture I hate—and led me into the house.

“What’ll you have? Whisky or—”

“Nothing, thanks. Too early in the day for me.”