Fen Country Read online

  It was a little after midnight, and the narrow street was deserted. The big car moved off smoothly and quietly. Presently it stopped by an overgrown bomb site, blanched under the moon, and the blinds were drawn down. There they gagged Eliot, and blindfolded him, and tied his hands behind his back. When they found him submissive, their confidence perceptibly grew.

  Between them and Addison’s lot, Eliot reflected as the car moved off again, there was little or nothing to choose: petty crooks, all of then, petty warehouse thieves whose spheres of operation had happened to collide. That was why he was here.

  He made no attempt to chart mentally the car’s progress. He had not been asked to do that—and it was Eliot’s great merit as a hireling murderer that he was incurious, never going beyond the letter of his commission. Leaning back against the cushions, he reconsidered his instructions as the car purred on through. London, through the night.

  “Holden’s people are getting to be a nuisance,” Addison had said—Addison the young boss with his swank and his oiled hair and his Hollywood mannerisms. “But if Holden dies, they’ll fall to pieces. That’s your job—to kill Holden.”

  Eliot had only nodded. Explanations bored him.

  “But the trouble is,” Addison had continued, “that we can’t find Holden. We don’t know where his hide-out is. That means we’ve got to fix things so that they lead us to it themselves. My idea is to make you the bait.” He had grinned. “Poisoned bait.”

  With that he had gone on to explain how Eliot was to be represented as a new and shaky recruit to the Addison mob; how it was to be made to seem that Eliot possessed information which Holden would do much to get.

  Eliot had listened to what concerned him directly and ignored the rest. It was thorough, certainly. They ought to fall for it.

  And, to judge from his present situation, they had.

  It seemed a long drive. The one thing above all others that Holden’s men wanted to avoid was the possibility of being followed, the possibility that he, Eliot, might pick up some clue to the hide-out’s whereabouts. So whatever route they were taking, it certainly wasn’t the most direct.

  At last they arrived. Eliot was pushed upstairs and through a door, was thrust roughly on to a bed. A bed, he thought: good. That meant that Holden had only this one musty-smelling room. All the more chance, therefore, that the job would come off.

  He let them hit him a few times before he talked: his boyhood had inured him to physical pain, and he was being well paid. Then he told them what they wanted to know—the story Addison had given him, the story with just enough truth in it to be convincing. Eliot enjoyed the acting: he was good at it. And they were at a disadvantage, of course, in that having left the blindfold on they were unable to watch his eyes.

  In any case, Holden—who to judge from his voice was a nervous, elderly Cockney—seemed satisfied. And Holden was the only one of them who mattered.

  Before long, Eliot knew, the police would get Holden, and Addison, too, and their small-time wrangling for the best cribs would be done with for good and all.

  That, however, was of no consequence to Eliot. All he had to do was to say his lesson nicely and leave his visiting card and collect his fee. And here it was at last: the expected, the inevitable offer. Yes, all right, Eliot said smoothly after a few moments’ apparent hesitation; he didn’t mind being their stool-pigeon so long as they paid him enough. And they were swallowing that, too, telling him what they wanted him to find out about Addison’s plans, sticking a cigarette between his bruised lips and lighting it for him.

  He almost laughed. They weren’t taking off the blindfold, though; they didn’t trust him enough for that. They were going to let him go, but in case he decided not to play ball with them after all, they weren’t risking his carrying away any important news about them.

  They were going to let him go. This is it, Eliot thought. And delicately, as he lay sprawled on the bed, his fingers moved under the hem of his jacket, so that, hidden from his interrogators, something slim and smooth rolled out on to the bedclothes.

  Fractionally he shifted his position, thrusting the obiect, to the limit that the rope round his wrists would allow, underneath the pillow. It was a nice litte thing, and Eliot was sorry to lose it: in appearance, nothing more than an ordinary propelling pencil, but with a time-fuse inside it and a powerful explosive charge.

  Addison had told him that it was one of the many innocent-looking obiects supplied to French saboteurs during the Occupation, to be deposited on the desks of German military commanders or in other such strategic places. Eliot had appreciated its potentialities. As a means of murder it was chancy, of course: this one might kill Holden, or on the other hand it might kill a maidservant making up the bed.

  But that was none of Eliot’s business. He was doing what he had been told to do, and whether it succeeded or not, he was going to collect.

  The return drive was a replica of the first. At the bomb-site the gag and bonds and blindfold were taken off, and presently Eliot was back at his lodging-house door, in the gray light of early dawn, watching Holden’s car drive rapidly away.

  He mounted to his room, examined his damaged face without resentment in the mirror, on an impulse started to pack. Then, tiring suddenly, he lay down on the bed and slept. The pencil had been set to explode at eight.

  It was a quarter to eight when Eliot woke, and the full light had come. Finish packing first, he thought, then see Addison and report. The early editions of the evening papers would tell him before he caught the boat-train whether Holden was dead or not.

  So he was shifting the pillows, to make more room on the bed for his big, shabby suircase, just as the clock of St. John’s struck the hour.

  And that was when he saw the pencil.

  For a second he stared at it in simple incomprehension. Then understanding came. Of course, thought Eliot dully, of course. They weren’t risking the secret of their precious hide-out. This is where they brought me to, after driving me round and round the streets. This is where they questioned me—here in my own room.

  Panic flooded him. He ran. From the bedside to the door was a distance of no more than three paces.

  But the explosion had caught and killed him before his fingers even touched the knob.

  Windhover Cottage

  “Mrs. Cowen?”

  “Yeah, I’m Mrs. Cowen.”

  “Detective Sergeant Robartes, madam. Scotland Yard. If I could just have a brief word with you—”

  “Well!” Wendy Cowen’s laugh was a fraction unsteady. “Has your Immigration Depanment changed its mind and decided I’m an undesirable alien or something?”

  “Nothing like that, Mrs. Cowen. It’s about your husband, Dr. Philip Cowen.”

  “Phil!” Wendy stared. “Not—not an accident?”

  “No, your husband’s quite well, madam. It’s just that there’s been a—a little bit of trouble at this cottage he rented near Awton, and the Yard asked me to find you and take you down there. If we catch the 10:18 train—”

  “Trouble?” Wendy exclaimed. “Look, Sergeant, try to be a little more specific, will you, please?”

  “Well, Mrs. Cowen, it seems that when your husband got back to the cottage last evening from his usual walk, he—well, to be blunt about it, he found a girl dead in the parlor. Of course, he reported the discovery to the police, straightaway. And of course, they’re having to look into it. Incidentally, Mrs. Cowen, we understood from your husband that you weren’t due in England till this evening.”

  “I managed to get away twenty-four hours earlier than I’d expected. Pan-American notified me of a last-minute cancellation on yesterday’s flight, so I switched my booking to that.”

  “Ah. A good thing we took the trouble to check their passenger lists, then. You spent last night here in your husband’s flat, I take it?”

  “Sure. I didn’t heve a key, but I showed my identification to the janitor and he let me in.”

  “Yes, we guessed you’d
probably have come here. Dr. Cowen was worried, you see, about not being able to get up to London to meet you when you arrived.’”

  Wendy Cowen gestured impatiently. “Let’s cut out the small talk, Sergeant, shall we? Whatever it is, tell me. I can take it.”

  Robartes eyed her thoughtfully; and decided that probably she could. He said: “This girl was murdered, you see.” And she nodded slowly, biting her lip.

  “Yeah. That was indicated. And you think—you think Phil did it?”

  “I said nothing about that.”

  “Okay, okay,” she answered wearily. “Skip it. How far is this place, this cottage? Could we drive there?”

  “Certainly, if you’d rather.”

  “I have a Jaguar, you see, a brand-new one. It was going to be a surprise for Phil… Mail-order, sort of. They had it waiting for me at the airport when I stepped off the plane—l’d cabled them from New York I was going to be a day earlier, and—”

  “But you didn’t cable your husband?”

  “No, Sergeant, I didn’t cable my husband. It was going to be a surprise for him, see? Maybe it still will, at that… Let’s get moving, shall we?”

  The roads out of London were relatively clear that morning. So was the A30—with the result that by the sergeant’s watch it was scarcely more than two hours before they reached Awton, where they stopped to ask for directions. Up till then, they had spoken little. But as, leaving the main road, they drove on beyond the little town, the sergeant fished a pencil and notebook from his pocket, saying:

  “There are just one or two things I’d like to check, Mrs. Cowen, if you don’t mind.”

  The girl’s face was expressionless, mask-like. “Go ahead,” she told him.

  “You reached the flat about seven last evening?”

  “Correct.”

  “And then?”

  “Then? Then I fixed myself a snack out of a can and went to bed. I was tired.” She paused, then added: “To start with, I’d had the idea of not stopping off in London at all. I thought I’d drive straight down here from the airport. But by the time we landed I wasn’t feeling so good. Airplanes don’t agree with me, I guess. Anyway, we weren’t planning to keep on the cottage after today, so I thought I’d stay the night in Town and then drive down this morning and fetch Phil back to the flat.”

  “Your husband is a research physician?”

  “Yeah.”

  “When did you first meet him?”

  ‘Three, four months ago. He was over in the States, working at Johns Hopkins.”

  “And it was in the States that you were married?”

  “Yeah. We had a two-week honeymoon, and then he had to get back here to England. I couldn’t come with him because I was working then for a fashion magazine, and couldn’t throw up the job in a hurry. So we arranged he should rent some place quiet in the country where he could go ahead and work his material up into a book, and I’d join him as soon as I could get away.”

  “I see.” And there was silence. Presently Wendy said ironically:

  “I wouldn’t want you to talk yourself dry, Sergeant, but would it be in order for me to ask just how this—this female was killed?”

  “She was hit with a poker,” said Robartes shortly.

  “Uh-huh. And did Phil—I mean, was she someone he knew?”

  “Yes.”

  He glanced quickly et her as he said it, but she kept her eyes fixed steadily on the level stretch of road ahead. “A fine thing,” she murmured. “A fine thing…” She changed gear, not gently. “And there was I, imagining—”

  ‘We turn right here,” Robartes interrupted her. She braked hurriedly, and with no more than inches to spare they scraped into a side turning which the trees had hidden, and began to climb a steep, unexpected hill. “…And there was I,” Wendy resumed bitterly, “imagining he was the sort of guy that can be faithful for six weeks or so. Well, so I was wrong…

  “But Phil Cowen never killed anyone, Sergeant, you can take it from me. He just isn’t the type.”

  And so in silence they came to Windhover Cottage; to a garden where a lean, yellow-haired, sullen-looking man was talking with two others, uniformed. At the sound of the car he looked round resentfully. Then he saw who was driving it.

  “Wendy!” he ejaculated, hurrying toward her. “What—how did you—”

  And then his steps faltered, and he stopped; and a slow flush spread over his face. And Wendy tried a smile.

  “Hello, Phil,” she said shakily. “Fine reunion you fixed up.”

  After half an hour’s pacing in the garden, Robartes and the local inspector, whose name was Beadnell, had found themselves pleasantly in agreement.

  “The girl, Joan Moss, lived with her parents in Awton,” Beadnell had told Robartes. “But they didn’t have much control over her, and she used to drive out here most evenings to see Cowen, and sometimes to stay the night.

  “Yesterday evening she was here with him as usual. And his story is that about nine o’clock he went out for a walk, leaving her at the cottage, and that when he got back at half-past ten, there she was with her head battered in. As simple as that. As to the poker, there are no prints on it except his, none at all—though I’ll admit his are a bit blurred. Someone wearing gloves could have handled it subsequently.”

  “Did he meet anyone when he was out walking?” Robartes asked.

  “Nobody, it seems. If he ever went out walking at all.”

  “M’m,” said Robartes. “Well, look, Beadnell, here’s how I see it…” And he went on to explain in detail how he saw it and why.

  So then they went into the house, to where Wendy and Philip Cowen waited, and Beadnell said:

  “Mrs. Cowen, I must ask you to come to the police station for further questioning. Also, it is my duty to warn you that you needn’t make any statement if you don’t wish to.”

  “Me?” She stared at him. “Look, you surely can’t imagine…”

  “Better not say too much now, Mrs. Cowen,” Robartes interrupted her. “For your information, our case is that you drove down here last evening, found Joan Moss alone in the cottage (your husband being out walking), interpreted her presence here correctly, killed her in a fit of jealous rage, and then drove back again to London. Your claim to have spent the night in the flat, from seven onward—”

  “Prove it,” said Wendy Cowen harshly. “Just prove that I was here. If you can.”

  “And you didn’t mind your husband taking the rap, did you?” said Robartes remorselessly. “For the very good reason that it wasn’t love for him that made you kill: it was wounded pride.

  “As to proof, I had that staring me in the face all the way down here: though I’ll admit I didn’t notice it until you made the mistake of changing gear, on a level stretch of road, just before we came to a hidden turning which led up an unexpected steep hill. A driver doesnt do that sort of thing unless he’s been in the neighborhood before.”

  “You’re crazy!” she exclaimed. “Even if I did do that—and there’s only your word for it—”

  “Oh, quite, Mrs. Cowen,” said Robartes smoothly. “I wouldn’t say it was conclusive, at all. Still, your car was new only yesterday, wasn’t it? So I think that while you’re having your little chat with Beadnell, we’ll get a mechanic along to make sure the mileage indicator is working properly.

  “And really, you know, I expect he’ll find that it is.”

  The House by the River

  No, the housekeeper said, she was sorry, but the chief constable still wasn’t back from London. He ought to be arriving any time now, though, so if the superintendent would care to wait… The superintendent said that he would wait in the garden.

  But it was the farmhouse across the river, rather than the gentle airs of the October evening, which made him decide to stay out of doors.

  At first he was resolute in ignoring its obsessive summons. Then, as time wore on, his determination weakened. And presently (as in his heart of hearts he had known must happen i
n the end), he found himself crossing the leaf-strewn front lawn, found himself halted by the bedraggled hedge at the far side and staring over the stream at the outhouse where Elsie the servant-girl had kept her last assignation…

  Death by strangling.

  Across the river, a figure, unidentifiable in the failing light, was emerging from the stables, was trudging through the yard. It was Gregson, obviously: Gregson the retired Indian Civil Servant, Gregson the tenant of the farmhouse, Gregson the widower, Gregson the pathetic, Gregson the bore: Gregson who had no doubt been fussing in the stables over the horse he had bought that morning… Glumly the superintendent watched him until he disappeared from view. In a few weeks’ time the superintendent, too, would be retiring.

  And: I’ll be glad to be done with it, he said to himself now: my God, yes, I’ll be glad to get away from it all.

  The sound of a car roused him, and he returned to the house. “Here we are, sir,” he said with a cheerfulness he was far from feeling, as he helped the chief constable out of the driving-seat. “Conference go off all right?”

  “Hello, Tom.” The chief constable was thin and old, and his complexion looked bleached. “The conference? Oh, the usual thing, you know: too many speeches and too few resolutions. Ruddy awful hotel, too.”

  “What time did you leave Town?”

  “Two o’clock.”

  “Well, that’s not bad going… I’ve had a packet this afternoon, sir. Do you want a bath or a meal or something first, or shall I—”

  “No, I’d rather stretch my legs. Let’s stroll down to the river.”

  To start with they walked in silence—the companionable silence of men who have worked together amicably for many years. Then, as they came in sight of the farmhouse on the opposite bank, the superintendent nodded toward it and spoke.

  “That’s where it happened, sir—almost on your own doorstep, really. It’s the servant-girl, Elsie. Throttled in an outhouse some time this afternoon.”