Mosley Went to Mow Read online

  The next unavoidable hazard was a confrontation with the ACC. The latest entries in the log would not properly have sunk into the ACC’s mind yet, and it might well be some time before they did. He was not a man capable of undertaking very many simultaneous mental processes: two was about the limit – and even that was exceptional.

  Nor was he a man on whose desk information was quick to arrive, and when it did, he did not always grasp its true significance at once – or even, as a rule, after repetitive explanation. Today, however, he seemed to have been in the toils of an intellectual blizzard. He was positively exploding with information. A report from Forensic had apparently landed in front of him while his Detective-Superintendent was out in the field, and not only had he understood it, his mind had pounced on its main implications. The blood on the reed matting from Janie Goodwin’s kitchen, like that on the Guinness bottle with which it had been presumed that she had had her head bashed in, had been firmly identified as that of a rabbit. And the wisp of hair adhering to it had, it seemed, been detached from a sheep.

  ‘One is tempted to think,’ the Assistant Chief Constable said, ‘that someone set out deliberately to make it look as if this woman had been attacked.’

  Grimshaw then filled him in on the day’s other unsatisfactory stories: the scattering of Janie Goodwin’s intimate effects over a generous area; the proliferation of hangman’s apparatus; the misadventure of Sammy Bagshaw; the loss of Brenda Shuttleworth; the spiriting away of Elizabeth Stirrup.

  ‘This is becoming a serious business,’ the ACC said, then tapped Forensic’s report. ‘If only you’d known about this earlier, you could have been looking for a discarded rabbit-skin while you were about it.’

  ‘Or for a sheep with a wisp of wool missing?’ Grimshaw asked between his teeth.

  ‘But the rabbit that the blood came from could surely be an important piece of primary evidence, could it not? I always think that –’

  ‘But then the Assistant Chief Constable pulled off the day’s treble. Something else occurred to him. ‘It’s a pity you had to employ children to look for a cadaver,’ he said.

  Grimshaw went back to the sweet silence of his own office, reached for a sheet of paper and began to write a mnemonic list of the things that he ought to be doing. He had not gone further than the second line when someone came to his door. It was Sergeant Beamish.

  ‘You told me to report to you personally at the end of the day, sir. I have been with Mosley since early this morning. I’m afraid I’m not entirely clear in my mind about what’s going on, sir.’

  Chapter Eleven

  Beamish’s briefing by Mosley had been to report early on the Saturday at Barker’s Clough to put up the Widow Rawlings’s curtains for her. Something had also been said in a casual fashion about perhaps ironing them for her while he was about it. But Beamish told himself that this had probably not registered properly on Mrs Rawlings’s mind, and that she probably would not want it, anyway.

  He wondered what hour counted as early in Barker’s Clough. Some of these old daleswomen had probably broken the back of their housework by sun-up. He decided to compromise. He would get there early, but not make any close approach until he was certain that there was life about the place. Dawn that day, such as it was, was scheduled to break round about half-past six. It was not so much a spreading of light as a preliminary notice of the rain that had not yet started. Beamish drove into Barker’s Clough and parked his car in a spot from which he could see the windows of the house without getting dangerously close. The first thing that violently struck him was that the curtains were already back in place. They had not been drawn to but hung neatly and motionlessly where they belonged. ‘Motionlessly’was the appropriate word, for there was nothing about the house to suggest that it was inhabited – not a flutter of wing or fur in the yard, not a showing of smoke from a chimney. Well – that need not have much significance. Mrs Rawlings had given the impression yesterday of being one of those dour old women who keep themselves in trim by wishing privation on themselves. She probably did not light a fire until her morning chores were behind her, preferring to enliven her circulation by the activity of her limbs.

  Then Beamish did see a token signal from a cowl – not a vigorous plume, but a thin rising spiral, as from a cigarette that a man is forgetting to smoke. He decided to go up and make himself known, though he did not now see what he could usefully achieve. As the curtains were already up, the reason for his visit had been pre-empted. Had Mrs Rawlings been physically capable of rehanging them without assistance? It was hardly likely that the sight of him would bring her pleasure. She would merely assume that this was a second unwanted invasion of her domestic privacy.

  He drew up in the yard, parked his car with its bonnet pointing for a dignified getaway should he run into a hurricane of abuse. Again he had the forceful impression that the house was unoccupied: no face behind the curtains, no cat on the sill, not even a bird waiting for an expected crumb. Even the windows had that lifeless look that can only be managed by glass that finds nothing worth reflecting; the sky was a uniform deep grey. The rain would not hold off much longer.

  He put his hand to the latch and to his surprise it lifted readily. He stepped into the living-room in which he had talked to Mosley and the widow yesterday. It was in every respect a cold room. The stone walls enclosed a temperature that felt chillier than the air outside. The grate, in which a cheerful coal fire had been burning yesterday, had been thoroughly cleaned out. A small quantity of paper, three or four sheets from a cheap correspondence pad, had been recently burned. There was still slight warmth in the ashes as Beamish touched them lightly with his knuckles. Perhaps this accounted for the vestigial smoke that he had seen from a distance.

  ‘Mrs Rawlings!’

  He called her name, but there was no response. There sounded something ineffectual in his voice, which seemed to carry nowhere. He remembered that she was very deaf.

  He was now convinced that he was on the brink of coming upon some sight for which he had better steel himself. He pushed open a door that he had not seen opened yesterday. The house, though not large, was asymmetrically complex. He found himself in a dark and narrow stone-flagged passage that wandered round right-angles between the doors of rooms that had previously performed some function in the No Man’s Land between farming and housekeeping. He opened and shut them, saw a jumble of old zinc baths, of vats, churns and troughs. It must have been months or years since anyone had been in to look at this junk.

  He thought he heard a single footfall behind him, as if someone else had come out of the kitchen, but when he spun on his heel and dashed back, there was no one there. Then he thought he heard the opening and shutting of a door, and the crunch of a foot on the ground outside. He rushed to the window, having to knock over obstacles to get there. But he could see no one – though suddenly he caught sight of his own car. Nonsensically, there seemed something unexpected in seeing it there.

  ‘Mrs Rawlings!’

  There came back only emptiness. He went upstairs, observed that only one bedroom was in regular use. All the others were cold, dusty, and repositories for unwanted furniture. The widow’s room was what he might have expected of it – a chair, a commode, a chest of drawers from the turn of the century, a text on the wall, a general eschewing of colour or comfort.

  He went down and out of the house to look round its surrounds. There were several sheds and outhouses, all of them cluttered with bygones. In one he saw a neat stack of timber, cut in varying lengths, and with numbers painted on the components, as if to assist assembly. There were corner stanchions, handrails and a rudimentary lever resembling those used by railway signalmen. Surely Mrs Rawlings had not done a deal for Billy Birkin’s abortive vocational equipment? And all the time that he was looking, he seemed to keep hearing single footsteps, now round this corner, now round that, now to his left, now to his right, but always behind him, usually obliquely so, and always proving him mistaken when he kept mov
ing round walls and angles to make sure.

  He made another systematic tour inside and outside the house before deciding that there was definitely no one to be found, then got into his car and started the engine. There was only one next move to make in such a situation as this, and that was to refer it to Mosley. He had taken no risks, had made written notes of the catalogue of Neighbouring that Mosley had had in mind for the day. This morning, if Beamish was not mistaken, he had intended to call on an elderly man in a village called Hadley Dale and give him a lesson in riding a bicycle. The first drops of rain began hitting Beamish’s windscreen as he drove back down through Barker’s Clough. Conditions were not going to be ideal for outdoor pursuits.

  To reach Hadley Dale, a village some fifteen miles away and situated in a different valley, he had to pass through Hempshaw End. Grimshaw’s miscellaneous squad was just waiting to form up as Beamish approached. He saw the Junior School, all eager to stumble over decomposing corpses in marshy hollows. Had Grimshaw the vaguest idea what he might be stirring up here? Beamish saw Nigel and Sue, the girl trying to side-step away from her companion, as a pigeon on a railway platform may be seen declining the advances of a cock who has got his timing wrong. He caught sight of Grimshaw, who at that moment was holding his whistle in his hand, swinging it to and fro at the end of a short lanyard. And the sight of Grimshaw caused his feet to go to his clutch and brake pedals simultaneously. He reversed into a field entrance and drove back some way along the road by which he had come. Because he knew that if Grimshaw saw him, he might easily have second thoughts about his spending the working day with Mosley.

  When Beamish returned through Hempshaw End, Grimshaw’s command had advanced from its start-line, so he was able to make his way through the village unimpeded. Beamish did not think he had ever seen a human settlement so quiet in the daytime. The streets were deserted. No one was coming or going from the shops. Except for the odd house-bound paralytic, everyone in the place must be out getting merrily soaked. Beamish’s route took him up past the schoolhouse, and there at last he did see someone.

  Coming down from the old school towards the village, he saw a man and woman walking very close together. The woman he recognized at once as Miss Stirrup, Miss Crane’s young friend, of whom he retained the most neutral of impressions. He waved to her, and she looked at him with the most neutral of expressions, as if she was not sure whether the wave was meant for her or not, but she would certainly have resented it if it were. As he was driving past at about thirty-three miles an hour, Beamish did not exactly take a mental photograph of the man. He was therefore not able to give a very full description when that later became desirable. But he saw that he was a man past his prime, hatless and wearing a camel-hair coat that must have cost him several months’earnings of a detective-sergeant.

  It took Beamish about half an hour to reach Hadley Dale. It was a village with a nucleus, for the main street broadened out in front of its post office and two pubs and would have made a suitable arena for an annual fair, if one had ever been held. It was not to be expected that there would be many people about this morning, for the rain was now lashing across this public place in a horizontal sheet. But even at that, the village looked no more occupied than Hempshaw End had done. The lifelessness had something frighteningly unnatural about it – a sort of community catalepsy. There ought, Beamish thought, to be somebody abroad. There must surely be some piece of gossip that demanded transmission, come hell or high water, some packet of salt or can of beans to be acquired for hard cash. But the two pubs – not famous for their recognition of licensing hours – looked as quiescent as the churchyard. A bread van was standing outside one cottage. Its rear doors were swinging open, and the fury of the storm was whipping in on the wrapped, sliced loaves. But no baker’s vanman was in evidence.

  Then Beamish did see someone: a small child running vigorously the length of the broad street, up to the ankles in every puddle that stood in his way.

  Beamish wound down his window. ‘Where,’ he shouted, ‘is everyone?’

  ‘Mr Mosley is teaching old Steve to ride a bike. Everybody’s gone to watch. It’s going to be good.’

  The boy, who had hardly stopped running to answer, was already disappearing at the far end of the street. Beamish cruised slowly forward, in time to see him dodge through the gateway of the village hall.

  And in that building, some couple of hundred people were standing tightly packed against the walls, watching an old man of short stature ride round the cleared wooden floor-space in long ellipses, careful not to allow the soles of both feet to leave the ground at the same time. Standing at the geometrical centre of these gyrations, his raincoat open, his black hat safely jammed into place, Mosley looked like a classical circus ringmaster. He was extremely pleased to see Beamish.

  ‘Ah! The very man! Take over from me, will you? Something else has blown up. I’ve got to go and attend to it.’

  The rider was at that moment disentangling himself from a minor spill. As Beamish was helping him to his feet and holding the machine for him to remount, he heard the uniquely identifiable racket of Mosley’s car-engine starting up outside.

  Even as it was passing, Beamish knew that the next half-hour was going to rank as one of the unhappiest he had ever spent. He was no more cut out for giving cycling instruction than Steve Blamire was for receiving it. Blamire was not even properly dressed for the activity. His trousers had been bought off their original peg by a much taller man, and even clips, if he had been wearing them, would not have kept their turn-ups from enveloping the pedals. And Beamish’s material teaching problems caused him to overlook the proper disciplinary command of his audience. In their excitement, they had begun to advance from the positions tight against the wall in which Mosley had fixed them. Some of the children, their interest in the spectacle flagging, had begun to encroach, to their peril, on the Lebensraum that Old Steve needed. And Old Steve, angry and surprised at his repeated failures in public, turned his wrath against the shortcomings of his instructor, which was just what the public was waiting for. They missed Mosley – and began to hiss Beamish.

  He was saved by the arrival of an extremely crusty old sexton, who also served as caretaker of the Hall. It seemed that Mosley had taken the building for this nefarious purpose without proper consultation; but it was Beamish who was clearly going to take the entire blame.

  He was not inclined to defend himself. He was only too happy to see an end of this lunatic activity. Then the crowd bunched up in the doorway, and it was impossible to exit with any kind of dignity.

  But before Beamish could push his way back to his car, he felt his sleeve being pulled. It was the sexton again, now winking in a manner that Beamish thought at first was a facial tic.

  ‘Excuse me, sir. Mr Mosley asked me to break the proceedings up. He would like you to call at Mrs Foley’s. He is tuning her piano.’

  ‘Tuning her piano?’

  ‘That’s what he said, sir.’

  Mrs Foley’s cottage was a snug little cube that might have figured as an illustration in a sentimental history of the English home. It had a great deal in it that was of sentimental interest – including a fifty-year-old radio receiver that still worked with valves and an accumulator. But Beamish was in no mood to be moved by sentimental evocation. The morning had rattled him. He had had enough. In particular, he had had enough of Mosley. It was no mere question of umbilical parting – the cord was in imminent danger of actual explosion. His bile was not relieved by the sight of Mosley himself, looking incredibly more foolish than in any man’s worst imaginings. Mosley had taken off his coat, and had pushed his hat back towards the back of his head.

  ‘I’ll go and get you a cuppa.’

  Mrs Foley left the room, and Beamish advanced truculently on Mosley. ‘What the hell are you up to now, you damed old idiot? You know you don’t know how to tune a bloody piano.’

  ‘I shall know more about it, by the time I’ve done with this one.’


  He had taken the front off the ancient rosewood upright, and at least seemed to have equipped himself with the right kind of keys and hammers.

  ‘After all, I’ve seen it done. I can sing in tune. I know what a scale is. It’s only a matter of tightening up a length of wire here, slackening one off a shade there. You don’t happen to have a tuning fork on you, do you?’

  ‘I’m sorry. I left it in my other suit.’

  Beamish had had no idea that the inside of a musical instrument could smell as revolting as this one did. There was historic dust within this article of furniture. Its ledges, cracks and crevices were spilling over with what moths had done with the felt of its dampers and hammers. Mosley gave his key a little knock to get it to turn a specially recalcitrant peg. This set up a sympathetic twanging from deep down in the frame of the thing.

  Mrs Foley came back with Beamish’s tea. She looked at the pair of them with lachrymose admiration. ‘It must be wonderful to be able to turn your hand to anything,’ she said.

  ‘It would be, wouldn’t it?’ Beamish said, when she had gone again.

  ‘Don’t be cynical, Beamish. It’s all in a good cause.’

  ‘You also belong to a club for the destruction of your neighbours’ pianos, I take it?’

  ‘I am very anxious to impress Mrs Foley.’

  ‘Oh. I thought you were trying to provoke her to bring a civil action against you.’

  ‘There is certain information that I want her to pass on to us voluntarily. She has a seven-year-old granddaughter coming to stay with her next week – a child who has taken the first rung of the ladder, and is entering for an elementary examination of the Royal College of Music. It is essential that this instrument should be in tip-top condition for her to practise on.’

  Mosley played by ear the first few bars of ‘Abide with Me’and listened critically to the echo.