Mosley Went to Mow Read online

  There were fingerprints about the room, but in the absence of Janie, there was no way of establishing which of these were her own. There were also the prints of at least two other persons – presumably the Meals on Wheels ladies. The blood from the kitchen matting and the Guinness bottle was duly dispatched to Forensic. There was not enough evidence to presume Janie dead, but the prognosis did not look good. Of Janie herself, alive or dead, there was no sign.

  The road in which she lived was as busy as any thoroughfare in Hempshaw End. It was sometimes said that if someone in Top Lane turned the page of his Hemp Valley Advertiser prematurely, there would be a complaint in Hempshaw Bottoms from someone who had not finished reading the Births, Marriages and Deaths. But nobody that Grimshaw had spoken to – and he had gone out of his way to speak to a good many – had seen anything of Janie Goodwin that morning. Nor had they seen anyone go to her house. No one had seen her put the fish card up in her window. No one had observed it after it had been put there. Yet in every other respect this appeared to have been a normal weekday morning, and the residents of Hempshaw End, particularly the women, must surely have spent a proportion of their time padding about from one back door to another, passing on such items of non-news as had come to their attention.

  And Grimshaw could not escape the galling certainty that if it had been Mosley asking the questions, the answers would have been more fruitful and less hesitant. Mosley would probably not have had to ask questions at all. People would have crossed busy roads to put him in the picture; that is, in the unlikely event that he was not, in his asinine way, in the picture already. It was remarkable in what a short space of time the absentee Mosley’s reputation expanded in his Detective-Superintendent’s mind. There were things about the natives of these back-hills that Mosley seemed to have known since the beginnings of time. Grimshaw, on the other hand, made no claim to having a way with rustic morons.

  He thought he might do rather better with the two ladies who had discovered the chaos in the cottage. He went over to the former village primary school, a building almost a hundred and fifty years old, which Miss Crane had had converted to her own design. Grimshaw judged her to be in her early sixties: clearly a woman accustomed to say ‘Go!’ whereupon people went. She was obviously intolerant of anything which did not seem to her to make sense; but the standard by which she judged what was sense was a personal one, to which she saw no reason to append footnotes.

  Her companion was younger, probably by twenty years or more. She was a woman who might possibly have made herself look attractive if she had had any leanings in that direction. It was not basically that she neglected herself. Her skin was well cared for, her cosmetics unadventurous but not inappropriate, her hair very frequently shampooed. But her ambition seemed to be solely not to offend. She would have hated to excite anyone. And she said very little during the interview, except to confirm what her hostess said. She was in all respects the uninvolved guest who had simply happened in on all this.

  Both women were subdued in the aftermath of their experience. They wanted to be helpful in any way they could, but could not really see ways of doing so.

  ‘This Goodwin lady, and her husband, Miss Crane. I keep being told stories of an unconsummated marriage. I am having some difficulty in arriving at the facts.’

  ‘That does not surprise me. A good deal of imagination has been whetted on the subject. I fear you would not find it relevant to your enquiry.’

  ‘At the present stage, I prefer to treat everything as relevant.’

  ‘There seems to have arisen an acrimonious quarrel on their way from the church to the reception. But this was only a reflection of what had been going on throughout their eighteen-year courtship. As a result, they never moved into the house they had built. It has now been taken over by an underground association that finds shelter for the homeless.’

  ‘And what have Mr and Mrs Cromwell had to say about this trespass?’

  ‘Nothing, to my knowledge. They are unselfish people. I would imagine they are both content to feel that the place is doing someone some good.’

  ‘They are capable of agreeing about something, then?’

  ‘Oh, yes. They have remained, after a fashion, very good friends. It is only when they are together that they fall out. Perhaps, Superintendent, you have some difficulty in adjusting your mind to the little things that loom large in a community such as ours? When one has lived among these people, one becomes accustomed to the things that go on.’

  ‘Perhaps. So are you in a position to tell me what is going on?’

  ‘Let us hope that it is “is” and not “was”,’ Miss Crane pleaded patiently. ‘Though I must say that the hairs on that bottle looked to me remarkably like Janie Goodwin’s. The point is, the Cromwells agreed to remain apart. I expect they felt that that would make for a quieter life. Though actually they do – did – oh, for goodness’ sake let’s say do – meet three times a week, on Tuesdays, Fridays and Sundays at morning-coffee time. Not that it is coffee they drink, one is given to understand. One gathers that both of them have redder-blooded tastes than that.’

  Grimshaw had not risen in rank without a certain mental acuity. He did recognize that today was Friday. So this man Cromwell and the woman who had disappeared might well have been together at the time when the woman’s household effects were being destroyed.

  But Miss Crane was still talking. ‘I cannot say whether they met this morning, because I did not spend this morning with them. Nor am I privy these days to the confidences of either of them. It is true that I was best man at their wedding, but since the rift in their lute, neither of them has been to me for advice. I do know that Cromwell was at his table by dinner time, because I took him his dinner. But if you want more information as to how he spent his morning, you had better ask your friend.’

  ‘Friend? What friend?’

  ‘Mr Mosley.’

  ‘What has Mosley to do with it?’

  ‘Mr Mosley spent the morning mowing Mr Cromwell’s lawn.’

  Grimshaw did his best to maintain the serenity of his features, to control the pitch of his voice and to manage the evenness of his respiration. There was a surrealism about this case that was beginning to affect him like sea-sickness.

  ‘You saw Mosley this morning?’

  ‘I did.’

  ‘And where is he now?’

  ‘I don’t know. He simply seems to have gone away. I did not want to waste too much time looking for him.’

  Somehow, Mosley’s disappearance at the crucial moment seemed predictable.

  ‘This rift in the Goodwin-Cromwell lute: what was the immediate cause of it?’

  ‘Different people have different ideas,’ Miss Crane said, and seemed to be having difficulty in fighting a wry smile away from her lips. ‘I doubt whether you would find it rewarding to explore them at this stage.’

  ‘At this stage I need to explore everything that there is to be explored.’

  The younger woman was looking on with silent neutrality.

  ‘It is said that Janie was not prepared to tolerate the knots in Cromwell’s bootlaces. There is one every half-inch or so. They are not very elegant.’

  Grimshaw was now looking at her with an expression of solemn patience, very consciously assumed.

  ‘Actually, he can dress quite well, when occasion demands it. And in his earlier way of life, he had to pay more than lip-service to formality. But even at the most demanding of functions, he never made any attempt to do anything about his bootlaces. He even turned up at the altar in them. Mind you, I am not saying that that was all there was to it.’

  ‘I dare say not.’

  ‘I do know that for some years before the wedding she tried hard to get him to thread them crosswise. But he preferred them straight across, parallel from eyelet to eyelet. I think he probably considers that more masculine. Isn’t macho a word much used nowadays?’

  Grimshaw was not taking notes.

  ‘Of course, if you ask
in the village, you are likely to hear more sensational explanations. Some may tell you that they finally parted because she had insisted on wearing to her wedding a plastic raincoat, which squeaked when she walked, thus setting his teeth on edge. To my mind, bootlaces and plastic raincoats were only the superficial symptoms of a deeper-lying incomptability.’

  When she spoke ex cathedra, Miss Crane had a voice that could have trooped a colour, and ex cathedra was the tone she considered fitting for a Detective-Superintendent.

  ‘So you see the boot is not entirely on one foot. Oh, I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have brought boots and feet up again. I’d hate you to think I’m trying to be facetious about it. But I must say that in my view they should never have married.’

  ‘Yet you seem to have taken an active part in promoting their union.’

  ‘Only to oblige, Mr Grimshaw. Not that I’m claiming noblesse, you understand. As the Prayer Book has it, a ritual contract is preferable to fornication. For which policy of prudence we thank the ever-vigilant St Paul, of course.’

  Grimshaw was saved from a Pauline digression by Miss Crane’s doorbell. It was Sergeant Beamish, reporting for duty.

  Beamish was the go-getting CID Sergeant from Q Division, an ambitious, intolerant and alarmingly energetic young man, whose up-to-dateness in his calling caused many senior officers to have to hold their peace in his presence. Grimshaw had had Beamish seconded to himself at Hempshaw End, and in so doing had applied a measure of casuistry. It was, he told himself, not merely in the hope of getting the case broken for him in double-quick time. There was also a certain sense of penance in wishing the young man’s company upon himself. Other officers had had to put up with him. Beamish, according to reports, was not merely astringent. When working alongside the old guard, he could be nothing less than petrifying.

  And there was another thing about Beamish. He had once worked on a case as Mosley’s right-hand man, and it had been felt in high places at the time that within forty-eight hours of their introduction to each other, one or both of them would have retired from the force. On the contrary, for some reason not amenable to the ordinary processes of logic, they had taken to each other. The dilapidated Inspector and the forward-looking Sergeant might seem irreconcilably polarized, but when they had eventually returned to their separate duties, each was heard to crush casual public criticism of the other. Their cross-pollination had produced a subtle change of outlook on both sides. The hope flickered in Grimshaw’s breast (may God and the ACC forgive him!) that something of Mosley’s approach to bucolic lunatics might have rubbed off on Beamish. And that Beamish might have learned from his improbable idol how to cajole information from men whose brains were like the wool of moorland sheep, and whose words were about as substantial as wind-borne thistledown.

  Now Beamish stood in Miss Crane’s doorway and awaited his superior’s orders with an eye that obviously expected any instruction from above to be infantile and supererogatory. Perhaps, Grimshaw reflected with an effort at charity, Beamish was not to be judged by his face; maybe it had just been his misfortune to have been born with that look on it. It would do Beamish good to be kept waiting a minute or two; there was another matter still to be cleared up with Miss Crane.

  ‘Do you,’ Grimshaw asked her, ‘know of anyone locally who has a gallows for sale?’

  ‘Oh, dear – is, is it likely to come to that, Superintendent? But surely you don’t expect to have to be your own executioner, do you? Capital punishment –’

  ‘I can see that you have no information on the subject, Miss Crane.’ Grimshaw spoke to her a good deal more sharply than he had intended.

  ‘I am sorry to disappoint you, Superintendent.’

  She looked at Elizabeth Stirrup as if her confidence in senior twentieth-century policemen was now perhaps within measuring distance of the ebb.

  Grimshaw turned to what he now saw as distinctly safer ground. ‘Ah! Beamish!’ He felt an absurd temptation to quote from Jabberwocky. ‘I left the scenes-of-crime people, doing their scenes-of-crime stuff down at the scene-of-crime,’ Grimshaw said, but his burst of brightness was wasted on the impassive Beamish.

  ‘Nip down there and see if they’ve turned up anything of interest.’

  ‘I called in on the way up, sir. I thought it would save time.’

  ‘Yes. Well?’

  Beamish looked steadily at Grimshaw and let his eyelids flicker fractionally to remind him that two outsiders were present. Did an experienced officer really propose to discuss casework in front of people who might turn out to be accessories? How did men get to be made Superintendent?

  ‘Shall we take a little walk, Sergeant?’

  Grimshaw took his leave of the ladies and suggested that he might be back later for further enlightenment. Outside, he waited for further news of the day from Beamish. Beamish produced a bulldog-style briar pipe, protected from defilement in a small plastic bag.

  ‘Found in the flowerbed under Mrs Cromwell’s front window, sir.’

  Trust Beamish to be scrupulous about the surname.

  ‘It has obviously not been there overnight, sir. No dew or damp has penetrated to the ash. I would say that it has obviously been smoked this morning. The tar along the edge of the bowl is still slightly viscous to the touch.’

  ‘Yes – I had noticed that.’

  ‘I would say that it belongs to a man with a lower denture, but who still has his own teeth in the upper jaw. Only a genuine canine could have produced that indentation.’

  ‘Clearly.’

  ‘A right-handed smoker. See the charring of the rim at this point, due to the repeated application of a lighted match.’

  ‘Very neat observation, Sergeant.’

  ‘And it was last smoked coming down this hill, I think. The wind today is from the south-east, and you can see where the most recent encrustation of the bowl has occurred.’

  ‘I was hoping you’d not fail to spot that, Sergeant.’

  ‘Cromwell’s pipe, do you think, sir? I learn that he normally calls on his wife on Friday mornings. You will have gathered already, sir, that the pair are married – ?’

  ‘Yes, Sergeant. I am well aware of that. But if –’

  ‘The marriage seems to have broken down within minutes of the ceremony, sir. One reason suggested for this is that Mrs Cromwell took offence because he presented himself in the front pew wearing a medal on his watch-chain that he had won with a racing pigeon. She felt that that betrayed his true sense of values. Or words to that effect.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘I think there may have been some element of the last straw about it,’ Beamish said.

  ‘Not improbably. What I was going to –’

  ‘Another version is that she refused to live with him until he had been to a chiropodist. She told him that she was not prepared to spend the rest of her life looking at the nails on his big toes. One was like a lamb’s ear, she said, and the other reminded her of a cockatoo’s beak.’

  ‘Had she somehow caught sight of his big toe in church, then, Beamish?’

  ‘No, sir, but she is said to have asked him in a whisper at some appropriate point in the service whether he had kept the appointment she had made for him.’

  ‘Beamish –’

  ‘But you see, sir, he had apparently insisted that she have something done about her sinuses. It would seem that she snored. May I ask you a question, sir?’

  ‘I will do my best, Beamish.’

  ‘Sir – what was all that about a gallows for sale?’

  ‘You don’t know about the gallows, Beamish?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘You haven’t so far found time to read the case-notes?’

  Grimshaw tone was acid, but he was quick to remind himself that he was rarely as unfair to his sergeants as this. He relented and brought Beamish up to date.

  ‘It’s a pity that Inspector Mosley is on leave, sir. I dare say he knows all about that gallows. Do you think, sir, that for something as big as
this, he would have any objection to being recalled from leave?’

  ‘A bad principle,’ Grimshaw said. ‘Are you suggesting that we cannot handle this ourselves?’

  ‘Not at all, sir. It is simply that Mosley has a way of talking to people.’

  ‘So have we, Beamish. Let’s go and start on this Roundhead.’

  Noll Cromwell was asleep at the moment that they knocked on his door. Whatever he had felt about his wife’s sinuses, his own snores penetrated a good three inches of oak. Grimshaw knocked and entered, and at very first sight it was obvious that Janie Goodwin had exercised no ultimate influence on those bootlaces. He had loosened them for sleep, and the tongues lolled out as if they belonged to some animal that had perished unstoically in a desert.

  Cromwell opened one eye and inspected his visitors with a ripe distillate of misanthropy. It was an instant of unmitigated ill will – but an instant was all that it was. As Cromwell became fully awake, he registered a sardonic amusement at the sight of them. If there was anything of which Noll Cromwell was certain, it was that he was a fair match for anyone who came at him with mere words. He would enjoy casting them down. He wished that more callers would come to take him on. He leaned down and gave a single tug at each of the notorious laces; and some reason for his obstinate retention of them now gained credibility. They were a work of art. The spacing of his knots was such that one single deft movement tightened everything within sight. Cromwell unbent himself with a wheezing aftermath of respiratory distress.

  ‘Do I take it that this is a professional call, gentlemen?’

  ‘Indeed it is,’ Grimshaw said, assuming that he knew who they were.

  ‘Folks haven’t told you that I’ve retired, then? I don’t dispose of people any more.’

  His eyes challenged argument.

  ‘Leastways, I have half a dozen more to put away – as personal favours. If you want their names –’

  ‘We are not here to make crude jokes,’ the Detective-Superintendent said.

  ‘I’d be sorry to offend you.’