Mosley Went to Mow Read online

Cromwell looked sincerely concerned.

  ‘But I always say that it’s a mistake to take death too seriously. I like to see people off with a bit of a smile, you know. They’re supposed to be on their way to everlasting happiness, aren’t they? So why bloody well cry about it? Do we begrudge them their reward?’

  ‘I think I should warn you, Mr Cromwell –’

  ‘Warn me, is it? Nobody’s put in a complaint, have they? Let me tell you, I’ve never had repercussions from a customer yet. When I see them off, they stay seen off. When I lay a man in his grave, he stays in it. All bar one, and that was a special case – and he didn’t show up again, the second time I put him down. I don’t know what sort of reputation you think I’ve got – but there’s no call to come warning me. My Janie, Jed Pearson, Billy Tucker, Stan Lomas, Harry Lamplough, Dick Berry – when that lot have joined the Great Chorus, my work’s finished. Now they tell me that John Nall, over at Hadley Dale, does a tidy and respectful job. And it stands to sense, he’s learning all the time. I’ve already exchanged contracts with him, for when my big moment comes.’

  ‘What are you under the impression that we are talking about?’ Grimshaw asked him.

  ‘Well, I’ve always thought it a silly word, but they call me an undertaker. I used to be a builder, you know, but I found myself specializing more and more. So what is an undertaker? It’s a man who undertakes to do something, isn’t it? It could go for gelding a tom cat or icing a cake. You undertake to do it – you do it. I undertake the ritual despatch of mortal shells. But except for the six good friends already mentioned –’

  ‘We are policemen, Mr Cromwell –’

  ‘Policemen? I thought that that daft bugger Mosley was our guardian of the peace.’

  ‘I am Inspector Mosley’s superior officer: Detective-Superintendent Grimshaw. And I am sorry to have to come upsetting you at the present time. But I must ask you: how did you spend this morning?’

  ‘Spend the morning? How do I spend any of my mornings? Doing my housework.’

  Grimshaw was practised at sizing up rooms as an indication of character, of way of life, of aspirations, social and personal, but it could be easy to make mistakes about this one. There was so much in it – such a welter of possessions – that dust was something that Cromwell must long ago have decided that he had to put up with. And it was not possible to tell how many of these things were true treasures, how many of them had simply arrived and not seemed worth the labour of shifting. They might even be a façade maintained to impress their owner’s world. He had the works of Dickens in a cheap uniform edition produced for newspaper promotion in the 1930s. He had books on all manner of things, from veterinary surgery to prosthetic dentistry – books on theology, history and oriental travels. He had Scott and Hardy, the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius alongside Todhunter’s Trigonometry and Gene Stratton Porter. He had an early acoustic gramophone and a stack of twelve-inch 78s, still in their tatty original covers: Gilbert and Sullivan, Les Cloches de Corneville, Puccini and Brahms. His morning’s chores had taken no account of the dust that lay on these. But it was true that housework was done here daily. His frying-pan looked regularly scoured. His sink and draining-board were left clean and empty at the end of his washing-up. There were no remnants in his garbage pail.

  ‘And it’s Friday today, you know. You wouldn’t expect me to miss the schools programme on BBC. “Threatened Species”!’

  ‘At what time did you go down to the village to see your wife?’

  ‘I didn’t, this morning.’

  ‘But it’s Friday.’

  ‘I had a visitor.’

  ‘A visitor? All morning?’

  Grimshaw had not forgotten, of course. But he waited to be told.

  ‘Jack Mosley. The daft bugger.’

  ‘He’s a friend of yours, is he?’

  ‘We’ve known each other for years.’

  ‘Mr Cromwell, I want you to be careful how you answer this – I happen to know that Inspector Mosley is on leave this week –’

  ‘So he told me. That’s why he came to mow my lawn. I didn’t ask him to. I didn’t want him to. I told him the mower was no bloody good. He found that out for himself in due course.’

  ‘So what was all this in aid of?’

  ‘He belongs to some club that goes about interfering with the privacy of senior citizens – like digging their plots, papering their rooms, chopping their kindling.’

  ‘And mowing your lawn?’

  ‘To the best of his ability – with a machine that’s stood out all the winter. He had to call it master.’

  ‘How long was he here?’

  ‘I don’t know. I wasn’t keeping a time-sheet on him.’

  ‘And you were here all the time he was?’

  ‘You don’t think I’d leave a copper alone on the premises, do you?’

  ‘Where did he go from here?’

  ‘He didn’t say. I didn’t even know he’d left.’

  Sergeant Beamish had managed to withdraw from Cromwell’s immediate arc of vision and was moving unobtrusively about the room. He looked at a letter which had been opened and folded back into its envelope. He looked at an air-rifle leaning in a corner, at a framed photograph of a woman.

  Cromwell must suddenly have sensed his progress. He hoisted himself abruptly from his chair and bellowed: ‘If it’s a conducted tour you want, I’ll be happy to oblige. But unless you tell me what you have on your minds, gentlemen …’

  Grimshaw made no effort to placate him. He got up and went round to the portrait that Beamish had been examining. It was a glossy enlargement from a fixed-focus snapshot. The camera had not been held straight, so the drably dressed woman caught shopping in a High Street seemed to be listing at a perilous angle. She was scowling at the unwelcome photographer.

  ‘When did you last see your wife, Mr Cromwell?’

  ‘When did I last see her? Tuesday, I suppose. We generally sip a tot of rum together on a Tuesday.’

  ‘And Fridays, as a rule, don’t you? Today’s Friday, Mr Cromwell.’

  ‘I’ve already told you – Jack Mosley came, and he started mowing, then I brewed tea, and he came in and sat through the schools broadcast with me.’

  ‘And talked to you?’

  ‘Of course he bloody well talked to me.’

  ‘About your wife?’

  ‘You seem very interested in my wife, Superintendent.’

  It was impossible to tell to what extent Cromwell was acting this naïveté.

  ‘Was this a friendly visit, Mr Cromwell – or had Mosley something on his mind?’

  ‘Who’s ever to tell what Jack Mosley has on his mind? I’ve heard it said, when he’s at his most friendly, that’s the time to put your shutters up.’

  ‘So he had you worried, had he?’

  And Cromwell laughed – with a violence that looked as though it might get out of hand.

  ‘Me? Worried by Jack Mosley? What am I supposed to have done?’

  His innocence had an almost frightening ring to it. If this was an evil man, Grimshaw reflected, then it was a very hideous evil indeed.

  ‘Is it true, Mr Cromwell, that you and your wife have never lived together?’

  ‘I dare say you’d like to know whether the marriage was ever consummated. That’s the word they use, isn’t it?’

  Cromwell could use big words with facility. Perhaps he had read some of the books with which his room was stacked and littered. Grimshaw was beginning to feel out of his depth. It was a totally different type of question that Mosley would have been asking here and now. Nevertheless, Grimshaw threw himself bravely at the incisive question now. After all, it was Cromwell who had raised the subject.

  ‘And was the marriage ever consummated?’

  ‘Not after the ceremony,’ Cromwell said.

  Period. Cromwell looked at Grimshaw, challenging him to follow that up. And Beamish was looking at Grimshaw as if pleading for a display of that kind of expertise that a sergeant has the right
to be shown by the head of his department.

  ‘The relationship between you and your wife defeats me,’ Grimshaw said.

  ‘Admitting for the sake of argument that it is any of your business, it has so far defeated us, Superintendent.’

  ‘So why am I making it my business?’ Grimshaw asked him.

  ‘God knows.’

  ‘Cromwell – I am almost tempted to believe that you do not know what happened at your wife’s cottage this morning.’

  Cromwell looked at him for some seconds as if this was something that officialdom considered clever. But he could not now miss seeing that the gravity behind Grimshaw’s eyes was not faked.

  ‘As true as God’s my judge, I’ve not been out all day. What are you trying to tell me?’

  ‘I’m sorry to have to be this kind of messenger.’

  Grimshaw described quietly and fully the scene that the two women had found. Cromwell accepted the facts without the bluster that Grimshaw had been more than half expecting. One might almost have thought that he was listening without emotion. But he could not speak at first when Grimshaw had finished.

  And behind him, across the room, Beamish was trying to mouth a silent word to the Superintendent.

  ‘I can assure you, Mr Cromwell, that we as a force are what we call pulling the stops out. We are a big organization, and we shall spare nothing to get to the bottom of this. And it is far too early yet for you to give up hope. Sergeant Beamish – are you trying to communicate with me?’

  ‘You have an exhibit, sir,’ Beamish prompted.

  ‘An exhibit?’

  ‘Placed carefully in a plastic envelope not much more than an hour ago, sir,’ Beamish said, splendidly cryptic – and too damned clever by half.

  ‘Ah!’

  Grimshaw produced the bulldog pipe, took it out of its wrapping and laid it down on the table in front of Cromwell.

  ‘When did you last see this?’

  ‘Earlier today.’

  ‘You did, did you? And may I ask when and where?’

  ‘Jack Mosley was smoking it.’

  The pipe was of no interest to Cromwell. He leaned across the table and gripped Grimshaw’s wrist. ‘Are you trying to tell me you think Janie’s dead?’

  ‘Let me see you hold this pipe between your teeth, Mr Cromwell.’

  ‘Put it back in its little bag, Superintendent. And give it back to Mosley next time you see him. Didn’t Sherlock Holmes once write a paper about tobacco ash? What was it he called it? A monograph? You’ll find that bowl is choked with Mosley’s filthy black Cavendish.

  I’ve smoked thin twist all my life; that’s pure tobacco – nothing but tobacco. And now tell me about Janie.’

  ‘I can’t tell you more about Janie than I’ve told you already. Until we find her – and we must pray that she has come to no harm –’

  ‘I’m her next of kin, Mr Grimshaw. I have my rights.’

  ‘Everyone has his rights. And everyone’s rights will be respected. And if you want to help, you’ll give me straight answers to just a few more straight questions.’

  ‘You can try asking. But I don’t think I know more than you do, Superintendent.’

  ‘Had your wife any enemies?’

  ‘What is an enemy?’

  ‘Someone who’d smash up her home and beat her about the head with an empty bottle.’

  ‘Not that kind of enemy.’

  ‘So what kind of enemy had she?’

  ‘A relief milkman who tried to make her pay for a pint she hadn’t had. Nothing more savage than that. And that didn’t lead to blows.’

  ‘What about the earlier part of her life?’

  ‘That’s something I can’t tell you all that much about.’

  ‘Was she born and brought up in these parts?’

  ‘You might say she was, and you might say she wasn’t.’

  ‘That sort of answer isn’t very helpful, Mr Cromwell.’

  ‘But it’s true. She was a Goodwin. That means she was born in Hempshaw End – but she never belonged.’

  ‘How come?’

  ‘The Goodwins had the big house. At one time.’

  ‘And I suppose there are all sorts of slanderous stories connected with them?’

  ‘You ought to ask Jack Mosley about that.’

  ‘Inspector Mosley isn’t here. I’m asking you.’

  ‘I’m not a reliable witness. I’m too close to the matter.’

  ‘What matter?’

  ‘The Goodwins. Go and ask Mosley.’

  ‘Mr Cromwell, stop being evasive. I’m asking you to tell me anything vaguely connected with you and your wife, which might suggest why anyone should want to harm her. Don’t try to decide what to tell me and what not to tell. Leave it to me to make up my mind what’s useful and what isn’t.’

  It was a bedrock obstinacy that had come over Cromwell. If he was a difficult man at the best of times, he could clearly be impossible when he had set his mind on some private course. He was beginning to feel the stress of what he had been told, and he was going to need long-term pressure. Grimshaw did not want to be drawn into a stultifying cross-talk act in front of Beamish.

  ‘I shall be back to see you again, Mr Cromwell. In the meanwhile, be getting things straight in your own mind. Start working out a plain and helpful statement. If you can’t give me one in a few hours’time, I shall begin to think that there are things you don’t want me to know about.’

  Cromwell looked at him with eyes that might possibly be pitying him for his wide-ranging ignorance of all the things that mattered in life.

  ‘I must ask you to hold yourself at my disposal. There will be a lot of policemen about for the next twenty-four hours or so. If you are thinking of going out of the village, let them know of your intentions.’

  ‘And where do you think I’d be likely to go?’ Cromwell asked him.

  They walked some way away from the Protectorate before Grimshaw informed Beamish what he had in mind.

  ‘We’ll lay on a staggered relief of DCs and aides to keep an eye on Cromwell. We’ll make the biggest box-search of the surrounding countryside that we can muster the manpower for. But we’ve only another hour or two before daylight begins to fade, and there’s not much we can do in this kind of country in the dark, except stumble about. Beamish – you know Mosley pretty well –’

  ‘I’ve worked with him.’

  ‘Successfully. That in itself is a news item. Have you worked with him in this area?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘So you won’t know who his local contacts are. But you know what sort of people they’d be?’

  Beamish permitted himself to show private amusement.

  ‘Have I said something funny, Sergeant?’

  ‘With respect, sir, I can’t help seeing the humorous side. Mosley’s likely contacts –’

  ‘A richly varied lot, obviously.’

  ‘And not easy to detect. I use that word carefully.’

  ‘So your immediate task, Beamish, is to find Mosley.’

  Beamish came to attention – not with arms, legs and feet, but with eyes that spelled out his readiness to comply at once with the impossible.

  ‘Tell him to report to me, leave or no leave.’

  ‘Sir.’

  Chapter Four

  From the diary of Elizabeth Stirrup for Friday, 8 April

  A day unique for its alarums and excursions. And at the end of it, a quiet hour with Georgina. But not in communion with her – as I had paradoxically hoped and feared. It is difficult to believe that at the age of thirteen I had a crush on this woman, that in passionate daydreams I tried to persuade myself that she was not less aware of me. I thought in those days that she was the easiest of women to understand. Tonight I am confused.

  Georgina was shaken. After they had finally taken the Meals on Wheels gear back to the dye works, neither of them fancied lunch. Elizabeth felt sick but could not be sick. Georgina disappeared into her bedroom, and when she came back, there wa
s drink on her breath. She now poured Martinis Bianco for both of them. It was unthinkable that in her teaching days she had been anything but a strict teetotaller.

  She talked about Janie Goodwin-Cromwell, about whose previous life there seemed to be as much of a mystery as about her marriage. She had been one of a number of daughters at Hempshaw Hall, the large house just beyond the lower end of the village – a residence that might have been thought of as a manor, had it not been so well known that Wilson Goodwin had mortgaged every brick, stone and slate of it. ‘The monkey on the chimney’: that was the phrase that Hempshaw End had for it. The Goodwins had held themselves aloof from the village, Georgina said. Their interests, anyway, were not such as the village would have shared. Their music, their formalized horse-riding, their eating rituals, their house parties, were not on a plane that Hempshaw End saw much point in. What did delight Hempshaw End was the knowledge, garnered in from various impeccable sources, that the Goodwins were not paying their way. This might have been found amusing by that stratum of village society who were owed no money, had no money, and held no hopes of money. It was a different matter for the tradesmen, whose bills swelled to the point where even the laggard feudal courtesies of the Hemp Valley had to give way to warning stances. Many were impoverished by the standard of living that they had enabled the Goodwins to lead, a few of them totally ruined. And it was rumoured that there were incomparably weightier debts owed to creditors more commercially minded than the Lancashire-Yorkshire border folk. The word was whispered that there were last-ditch borrowings from the private bankers of a world of which the Hemp Valley knew nothing.

  In Hempshaw End, Georgina said, men and women took pride in the independence of their judgement; though all that this meant was that they were as conventionally narrow, as socially envious, and as mindlessly xenophobic as the natives of any other valley. At the bottom they were contemptuous of the Goodwins. They firmly believed that in Hempshaw End they knew what was what. They knew that one day the Goodwins would come unstuck. And unstuck was what they came. Second mortgages, irredeemable, came up for redemption. Foreclosure was inevitable. The Hempshaw End estates were sold off and the Goodwins – Janie included – disappeared from Hempshaw End.