A Murder of Quality AND Call for the Dead Read online

  He glanced towards the garden. The coppice which bordered the lane encroached almost as far as the corner of the house, and extended to the far end of the lawn, screening the house from the playing fields. The murderer had reached the house by a path which led across the lawn and through the trees to the lane at the farthest end of the garden. Looking carefully at the snow on the lawn, he was able to discern the course of the path. The white glazed door to the left of the house must lead to the conservatory … And suddenly he knew he was afraid—afraid of the house, afraid of the sprawling dark garden. The knowledge came to him like an awareness of pain. The ivy walls seemed to reach forward and hold him, like an old woman cosseting an unwilling child. The house was large, yet dingy, holding to itself unearthly shapes, black and oily in the sudden contrasts of moonlight. Fascinated despite his fear, he moved towards it. The shadows broke and reformed, darting swiftly and becoming still, hiding in the abundant ivy, or merging with the black windows.

  He observed in alarm the first involuntary movement of panic. He was afraid, then suddenly the senses joined in one concerted cry of terror, where sight and sound and touch could no longer be distinguished in the frenzy of his brain. He turned round and ran back to the gate. As he did so, he looked over his shoulder towards the house.

  A woman was standing in the path, looking at him, and behind her the conservatory door swung slowly on its hinges.

  For a second she stood quite still, then turned and ran back towards the conservatory. Forgetting his fear, Smiley followed. As he reached the corner of the house he saw to his astonishment that she was standing at the door, rocking it gently back and forth in a thoughtful, leisurely way, like a child. She had her back to Smiley, until suddenly she turned to him and spoke, with a soft Dorset drawl, and the childish lilt of a simpleton:

  “I thought you was the Devil, Mister, but you’m got no wings.”

  Smiley hesitated. If he moved forward, she might take fright again and run. He looked at her across the snow, trying to make her out. She seemed to be wearing a bonnet or shawl over her head, and a dark cape over her shoulders. In her hand she held a sprig of leaves, and these she gently waved back and forth as she spoke to him.

  “But you’m carn’t do nothin’, Mister, ’cos I got the holly fer to hold yer. So you do bide there, Mister, for little Jane can hold yer.” She shook the leaves vehemently towards him and began laughing softly. She still had one hand upon the door, and as she spoke her head lolled to one side.

  “You bide away from little Jane, Mister, however pretty she’m do be.”

  “Yes, Jane,” said Smiley softly, “you’re a very pretty girl, I can see that; and that’s a pretty cape you’re wearing, Jane.”

  Evidently pleased with this, she clutched the lapels of her cape and turned slowly round, in a child’s parody of a fine lady.

  As she turned, Smiley saw the two empty sleeves of an overcoat swinging at her sides.

  “There’s some do laugh at Janie,” she said, a note of petulance in her voice, “but there’s not many seen the Devil fly, Mister. But Janie seed ’im, Janie seed ’im. Silver wings like fishes ’e done ’ad, Janie saw.”

  “Where did you find that coat, Janie?”

  She put her hands together and shook her head slowly from side to side.

  “He’m a bad one. Ooh, he’m a bad one, Mister,” and she laughed softly. “I seed ’im flying, riding on the wind,” she laughed again, “and the moon be’ind ’im, lightin’ up the way! They’m close as sisters, moon and Devil.”

  On an impulse Smiley seized a handful of ivy from the side of the house and held it out to her, moving slowly forward as he did so.

  “Do you like flowers, Janie? Here are flowers for Janie; pretty flowers for pretty Janie.” He had nearly reached her when with remarkable speed she ran across the lawn, disappeared into the trees and ran off down the lane. Smiley let her go. He was drenched in sweat.

  As soon as he reached the hotel he telephoned Detective Inspector Rigby.

  7

  KING ARTHUR’S CHURCH

  The coffee lounge of the Sawley Arms resembled nothing so much as the Tropical Plants Pavilion at Kew Gardens. Built in an age when cactus was the most fashionable of plants and bamboo its indispensable companion, the lounge was conceived as the architectural image of a jungle clearing. Steel pillars, fashioned in segments like the trunk of a palm tree, supported a high glass roof whose regal dome replaced the African sky. Enormous urns of bronze or greenglazed earthenware contained all that was elegant and prolific in the cactus world, and between them very old residents could relax on sofas of spindly bamboo, sipping warm coffee and re-living the discomforts of safari.

  Smiley’s efforts to obtain a bottle of whisky and a syphon of soda at half past eleven at night were not immediately rewarded. It seemed that, like carrion from the carcass, the journalists had gone. The only sign of life in the hotel was the night porter, who treated his request with remote disapproval and advised him to go to bed. Smiley, by no means naturally persistent, discovered a half-crown in his overcoat pocket and thrust it a little irritably into the old man’s hand. The result, though not magical, was effective, and by the time Rigby had made his way to the hotel, Smiley was seated in front of a bright gas fire in the coffee lounge with glasses and a whisky bottle before him.

  Smiley retold his experiences of the evening with careful accuracy. “It was the coat that caught my eye. It was a heavy overcoat like a man’s,” he concluded. “I remembered the blue belt and …” He left the sentence unfinished. Rigby nodded, got up and walked briskly across the lounge and through the swing doors to the porter’s desk. Ten minutes later, he returned.

  “I think we’d better go and pull her in,” he said simply. “I’ve sent for a car.”

  “We?” asked Smiley.

  “Yes, if you wouldn’t mind. What’s the matter? Are you frightened?”

  “Yes,” he replied. “Yes, I am.”

  The village of Pylle lies to the south of North Fields, upon a high spur which rises steeply from the flat, damp pastures of the Carne valley. It consists of a handful of stone cottages and a small inn where you may drink beer in the landlord’s parlour. Seen from Carne playing fields, the village could easily be mistaken for an outcrop of rock upon a tor, for the hill on which it stands appears conical from the northern side. Local historians claim that Pylle is the oldest settlement in Dorset, that its name is Anglo-Saxon for harbour, and that it served the Romans as a port when all the lowlands around were covered by the sea. They will tell you, too, that King Arthur rested there after seven months at sea, and paid homage to Saint Andrew, the patron saint of sailors, on the site of Pylle Church, where he burned a candle for each month he had spent afloat; and that in the church, built to commemorate his visit and standing to this day lonely and untended on the hillside, there is a bronze coin as witness to his visit—the very one King Arthur gave to the verger before he set sail again for the Isle of Avalon.

  Inspector William Rigby, himself a keen local historian, gave Smiley a somewhat terse précis of Pylle’s legendary past as he drove cautiously along the snow-covered lanes.

  “These small, out-of-the-way villages are pretty strange places,” he concluded. “Often only three or four families, all so inbred you can no more sort them out than a barnful of cats. That’s where your village idiots come from. They call it the Devil’s Mark; I call it incest. They hate to have them in the village, you know—they’ll drive them away at any price, like trying to wash away their shame, if you follow me.”

  “I follow you.”

  “This Jane’s the religious sort. There’s one or two of them turn that way. The villagers at Pylle are all Chapel now, see, so there’s been no use for King Arthur’s Church since Wesley. It’s empty, falling to bits. There’s a few from the valley go up to see it, for its history, like, but no one cares for it, or didn’t, not till Janie moved in.”

  “Moved in?”

  “Yes. She’s taken to clea
ning the church out night and day, bringing in wild flowers and such. That’s why they say she’s a witch.”

  They passed Rode’s house in silence and after turning a sharp bend began climbing the long steep hill that led to Pylle village. The snow in the lane was untouched and apart from occasional skidding they progressed without difficulty. The lower slopes of the hill were wooded, and the lane dark, until suddenly they emerged to find themselves on a smooth plateau, where a savage wind blew the fine snow like smoke across the fields, whipping it against the car. The snow had risen in drifts to one side of the lane, and the going became increasingly difficult.

  Finally Rigby stopped the car and said:

  “We’ll walk from here, sir, if you don’t mind.”

  “How far is it?”

  “Short and sour, I’d say. That’s the village straight ahead.”

  Through the windscreen, Smiley could discern behind the drifting veils of blown snow two low buildings about a quarter of a mile away. As he looked, a tall, muffled figure advanced towards them along the lane.

  “That’s Ted Mundy,” said Rigby with satisfaction, “I told him to be here. He’s the sergeant from Okeford.” He leaned out of the car window and called merrily:

  “Hullo, Ted there, you old buzzard, how be?” Rigby opened the back door of the car and the sergeant climbed in. Smiley and Mundy were briefly introduced.

  “There’s a light in the church,” said Mundy, “but I don’t know whether Janie’s there. I can’t ask no one in the village, see, or I’d have the whole lot round me. They thought she’d gone for good.”

  “Does she sleep there then, Ted? She got a bed there or something?” Rigby asked, and Smiley noticed with pleasure that his Dorset accent was more pronounced when he spoke to Mundy.

  “So they say, Bill. I couldn’t find no bed when I looked in there Saturday. But I tell you an odd thing, Bill. It seems Mrs Rode used to come up here sometimes, to the chapel, to see Janie.”

  “I heard about that,” said Rigby shortly. “Now which way’s the church, Ted?”

  “Over the hill,” said Mundy. “Outside the village, in a paddock.” He turned to Smiley. “That’s quite common round here, sir, as I expect you know.” Mundy spoke very slowly, choosing his words. “You see, when they had the plague they left their dead in the villages and moved away; not far though, on account of their land and the church. Terrible it was, terrible.” Somehow Mundy managed to imply that the Black Death was a fairly recent disaster in those parts, if not actually within living memory.

  They got out of the car, forcing the doors against the strong wind, and made their way towards the village, Mundy leading and Smiley in third place. The driven snow, fine and hard, stung their faces. It was an unearthly walk, high on that white hill on such a night. The curve of the bleak hill’s crest and the moaning of the wind, the snow cloud which sped across the moon, the dismal, unlit cottages so cautiously passed, belonged to another corner of the world.

  Mundy led them sharply to the left, and Smiley guessed that by avoiding the centre of the village he hoped to escape the notice of its inhabitants. After about twenty minutes’ walking, often through deep snow, they found themselves following a low hedge between two fields. In the furthest corner of the right-hand field they saw a pale light glimmering across the snow, so pale that at first Smiley had to look away from it, then run his eyes back along the line of that distant hedge to make sure he was not deceived. Rigby stopped, beckoning to the others.

  “I’ll take over now,” he said. He turned to Smiley. “I’d be obliged, sir, if you’d stand off a little. If there’s any trouble we don’t want you mixed up in it, do we?”

  “Of course.”

  “Ted Mundy, you come up by me.”

  They followed the hedge until they came to a stile. Through the gap in the hedge they saw the church clearly now, a low building more like a tithe barn than a church. At one end a pale glow, like the uncertain light of a candle, shone dimly through the leaded windows.

  “She’s there,” said Mundy, under his breath, as he and Rigby moved forward, Smiley following some distance behind.

  They were crossing the field now, Rigby leading, and the church drawing ever closer. New sounds disturbed the moaning of the storm: the parched creak of a door, the mutter of a crumbling roof, the incessant sigh of wind upon a dying house. The two men in front of Smiley had stopped, almost in the shadow of the church wall, and were whispering together. Then Mundy walked quietly away, disappearing round the corner of the church. Rigby waited a moment, then approached the narrow entrance in the rear wall, and pushed the door.

  It opened slowly, creaking painfully on its hinges. Then he disappeared into the church. Smiley was waiting outside when suddenly above all the sounds of night he heard a scream, so taut and shrill and clear that it seemed to have no source, but to ride everywhere upon the wind, to mount the ravaged sky on wings; and Smiley had a vision of Mad Janie as he had seen her earlier that night, and he heard again in her demented cry the dreadful note of madness. For a moment he waited. The echo died. Then slowly, terrified, he walked through the snow to the open doorway.

  Two candles and an oil lamp on the bare altar shed a dim light over the tiny chapel. In front of the altar, on the sanctuary step, sat Jane, looking vaguely towards them. Her vacuous face was daubed with stains of green and blue, her filthy clothes were threaded with sprigs of evergreen and all about her on the floor were the bodies of small animals and birds.

  The pews were similarly decorated with dead creatures of all kinds; and on the altar, broken twigs and little heaps of holly leaves. Between the candles stood a crudely fashioned cross. Stepping forward past Rigby, Smiley walked quickly down the aisle, past the lolling figure of Jane, until he stood before the altar. For a moment he hesitated, then turned and called softly to Rigby.

  On the cross, draped over its three ends like a crude diadem, was a string of green beads.

  8

  FLOWERS FOR STELLA

  He woke with the echo of her scream in his ears. He had meant to sleep late, but his watch said half past seven. He put on his bedside lamp, for it was still half-dark, and peered owlishly round the room. There were his trousers, flung over the chair, the legs still sodden from the snow. There were his shoes; he’d have to buy another pair. And there beside him were the notes he had made early that morning before going to sleep, transcriptions from memory of some of Mad Jane’s monologue on the journey back to Carne, a journey he would never forget. Mundy had sat with her in the back. She spoke to herself as a child does, asking questions and then in the patient tones of an adult for whom the reply is self-evident, providing the answer.

  One obsession seemed to fill her mind: she had seen the devil. She had seen him flying on the wind, his silver wings stretched out behind him. Sometimes the recollection amused her, sometimes inflated her with a sense of her own importance or beauty, and sometimes it terrified her, so that she moaned and wept and begged him to go away. Then Mundy would speak kindly to her, and try to calm her. Smiley wondered whether policemen grew accustomed to the squalor of such things, to clothes that were no more than stinking rags wound round wretched limbs, to puling imbeciles who clutched and screamed and wept. She must have been living on the run for nights on end, finding her food in the fields and dustbins since the night of the murder … What had she done that night? What had she seen? Had she killed Stella Rode? Had she seen the murderer, and fancied him to be the devil flying on the wind? Why should she think that? If Janie did not kill Stella Rode, what had she seen that so frightened her that for three long winter nights she prowled in terror like an animal in the forest? Had the devil within taken hold of Janie and given power to her arm as she struck down Stella? Was that the devil who rode upon the wind?

  But the beads and the coat and the footprints which were not hers—what of them? He lay there thinking, and achieving nothing. At last it was time to get up: it was the morning of the funeral.

  As he was getti
ng out of bed the telephone rang. It was Rigby. His voice sounded strained and urgent. “I want to see you,” he said. “Can you call round?”

  “Before or after the funeral?”

  “Before, if possible. What about now?”

  “I’ll be there in ten minutes.”

  Rigby looked, for the first time since Smiley had met him, tired and worried.

  “It’s Mad Janie,” he said. “The Chief thinks we should charge her.”

  “What for?”

  “Murder,” Rigby replied crisply, pushing a thin file across the table. “The old fool’s made a statement … a sort of confession.”

  They sat in silence while Smiley read the extraordinary statement. It was signed with Mad Janie’s mark—J. L.—drawn in a childish hand in letters an inch high. The constable who had taken it down had begun by trying to condense and simplify her account, but by the end of the first page he had obviously despaired. At last Smiley came to the description of the murder:

  So I tells my darling, I tells her: “You are a naughty creature to go with the devil,” but her did not hearken, see, and I took angry with her, but she paid no call. I can’t abide them as go with devils in the night, and I told her. She ought to have had holly, mister, there’s the truth. I told her, mister, but she never would hearken, and that’s all Janie’s saying, but she drove the devil off, Janie did, and there’s one will thank me, that’s my darling and I took her jewels for the saints I did, to pretty out the church, and a coat for to keep me warm.