Head of a Traveller Read online

  There was another moment of stunned silence. Then Lionel Seaton coolly said:

  ‘Well, it’s not very well preserved, of course, but it has quite a look of you, Father.’

  ‘No! It hasn’t, it hasn’t, it hasn’t, it hasn’t!’ Mara Torrance’s voice rose to a long, rasping scream. Mrs Seaton advanced upon the girl, slapped her face very hard two or three times. Mara’s screaming was cut off suddenly. Janet took the girl, sobbing now, awkwardly into her arms.

  The poet went up close to Superintendent Blount. ‘It’s incredible!’ he murmured.

  ‘What’s incredible, sir?’

  ‘That’s my brother. My brother Oswald.’

  ‘But he’s dead, Father,’ said Lionel. ‘I mean—’

  ‘He’s dead now, anyway.’

  The voice of Sergeant Bower broke in. ‘Very sorry, sir. The net slipped out of my hand. It got caught on a branch and the head rolled out of it before I could—’

  ‘Never mind, Bower. It was damaged enough already.’ And Blount gazed meditatively at the face, hideous with putrescence, wormholed by the beaks of birds, a dirty rag of flesh—all that remained of the neck—hanging away from the underjaw on the left-hand side where there were still the clear signs of a long, incised wound running from the left ear to just below the point of the chin.

  The Superintendent turned to Robert Seaton again. ‘I wonder could I trouble you for some brown paper and a cardboard hat-box, if you have such a thing.’

  PART TWO

  Chapter 7

  Janet Seaton Confesses

  ‘SO THERE’S ANOTHER possible reason for cutting off the head,’ said Nigel.

  ‘To conceal the way he was killed? Mphm. Don’t see how it helps us, though.’

  ‘Narrows down the search for a weapon,’ Nigel suggested.

  ‘Any sharp instrument could have done it. The wound won’t tell us much, I reckon, after all this time.’

  ‘Perhaps not. But, once the murderer had made a wound like that, you’d expect him to cut through it, not below it, when he was taking the head off. I suppose you’ve been into the razor question?’

  ‘Yes, Mr Seaton and his son use safety razors. Finny Black doesn’t have to shave. Mr Torrance has a cut-throat razor,’ said Blount.

  ‘He has, has he?’

  ‘Yes, but any sharp blade could have done it. A carving-knife.’

  ‘Surely not, Blount? All the indications are that Oswald Seaton would be very much on his guard when he returned here. He’d expect a whetted knife, rather than a fatted calf.’

  The two men were talking in Superintendent Blount’s bedroom at the Hinton Lacey pub. It was late on the same day as the head had been found. Nigel continued:

  ‘Oswald returned to Plash Meadow in a highly furtive way. We’re agreed on that?’

  ‘Uh-huh.’

  ‘Now, this fake suicide of his, ten years ago. The police had nothing against him. There was no question of a criminal charge, which he’d flee the country to escape?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘But he did, presumably, leave England. And he certainly staged a very convincing suicide. But, by all accounts—the editor of the Redcote Gazette would certainly bear this out—Oswald was not the sort of chap who’d give up his money, his position and everything, except under extreme pressure. He was a rat. He’d wriggle out of anything, Mr Keeley said. And if he was cornered, he’d fight.’

  ‘Verra like. But what’s this to do with the weapon that killed him?’

  ‘I’m working along to that. I suggest there’s only one thing which could have made Oswald fake a suicide and leave the country—he’d committed a crime, some very grave crime, which had not come to the ears of the police. I suggest that more than one person knew about this crime. If it had been one person only, Oswald would have done his best to silence him. But even he would hardly dare to try and bump off four people.

  ‘Why d’you say four?’

  ‘Because I’ve reasons for thinking that there were four people who knew something very much to Oswald’s discredit. But let’s skip that for the present. I suggest pressure was brought to bear upon him by one or more of these people. Either you leave the country, or we expose you to the police?’

  ‘Blackmail, eh? But why didn’t he just leave the country, then? Why the fake suicide? You mean the suicide was part of the bargain, part of the price he’d got to pay for silence?’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘And who profited from Oswald’s apparent death?’ Blount pursued. ‘His brother.’

  ‘His brother. And Janet Seaton. And indirectly the Torrances.’

  ‘His brother chiefly. Well then?’

  ‘Well, something happens which suggests to Oswald that it may be relatively safe for him to come back to England. Or perhaps it’s just that he’s on his beam-ends and desperate.’

  ‘Wait a minute, now. That’s vairy problematic and vague.’

  ‘Not entirely. I noticed in the Torrances’ studio, a copy of a society paper with a picture of the Seatons and Torrances outside Plash Meadow and a caption saying the Torrances lived here. The paper was a year old. You know the way back-numbers of English papers are found lying about abroad—in bars, or hotels, or waiting-rooms. I think it possible that Oswald may have seen this particular magazine, and—’

  ‘But why should a picture of this group at Plash Meadow give him the all-clear to come back to England? You’re implying that, because the Seatons and the Torrances were living together now, the danger to Oswald—the danger of his secret being exposed—was gone. It doesn’t make sense to me.’

  ‘Not gone, necessarily. But diminished enough for him to take the risk of returning. I can’t explain this side of it further till I’ve had another talk with Mara Torrance. Call it a hypothesis. What follows? Oswald works his passage back to England. He lands at Bristol, say, and lies up there. It may be that he communicates with someone at Plash Meadow, to take soundings. He is not confident at all of the reception he will get. He turns up here, by night, in the most unobtrusive way possible. He’s obviously going to be suspicious, on his guard still. That brings me back to the weapon. Can you imagine Oswald Seaton allowing any one at Plash Meadow near him with a carving-knife. You can’t conceal a carving-knife at all comfortably on your person. A razor, or a whetted clasp-knife, you can.’

  ‘But it’s exposure, not murder, he’d be apprehensive about.’

  ‘I agree. But, when you’re nervous, you’re nervous of everything. Think of the set-up. He arrives here at night. Someone meets him, either by appointment or by accident, we can’t tell which. Now, unless Gates and his men are absolute fools, the murder was not done in the house. There’d have been a hell of a lot of blood.’

  ‘You can take it from me it wasn’t. No stains anywhere. No clothing, carpets or rugs hidden or sent away to be cleaned.’

  ‘Then it was done outside the house. Where? In the garden or the orchard? Possible. But the murderer couldn’t rely on all traces of blood being washed away by the thunder-showers; and Gates would almost certainly have found some. The outbuildings? Worse still. But the dairy: that could have been sluiced down under cover of the noise of a thunder-shower. How could the murderer get Oswald into the dairy? By playing on his fears of exposure. Just hide in here, old man, for a few hours, till we’ve thought out the position and what we’re going to do next. But I don’t see Oswald trusting this person enough not to keep a wary eye on him. Or her. A carving-knife negligently carried in the hand would disquiet him, I fancy.’

  ‘All right. I give up the carving-knife. But your whole hypothesis breaks down on motive. If every one at Plash Meadow knew Oswald’s secret—’

  ‘Not every one, necessarily. Mr and Mrs Seaton, I suggest, and Rennell and Mara Torrance.

  ‘—why should Oswald have to be murdered? He could be made to disappear again by a threat of exposure.’

  ‘If his secret was that he’d done someone here a grievous wrong, there’d be a revenge motive. Let us
imagine that, of the Plash Meadow households, A was prepared to forgive and forget, and had encouraged Oswald to return: but Oswald is intercepted by B, the one he’d originally wronged, who still nourishes an inveterate hatred of him.’

  ‘Och, these A’s and B’s!—it’s all too much in the air. Where does Finny Black come in, anyway?’

  Nigel drew meditatively on his cigarette. ‘Do you think Finny did it?’

  ‘There’s no evidence.’

  ‘The head in the tree?’

  ‘Any one could have put it there.’

  ‘Any one active enough to climb the tree,’ said Nigel. ‘He wouldn’t risk bringing out a ladder for the purpose.’

  ‘I’ll tell you what I think about Finny Black.’ Blount leaned forward in his chair. ‘First, he had no motive we know of. Second, although he got queer in thunderstorms, there’s no record that his queerness ordinarily ran to violence. Third, if it did, it would be crazy violence—he’d not think about covering his traces; he’d not take his victim into the dairy, and Oswald wouldn’t meekly follow him there either.’

  ‘Agreed. So—?’

  ‘So, if it wasn’t the murderer himself who disposed of the head—and why should he choose such a—e-eh—such a far-fetched place to put it?—then the only possible explanation is that Finny Black saw the murder done, or maybe just came upon the head while the murderer was away disposing of the body, and ran off with it up the tree.’

  ‘Having, by a strange coincidence, a net-bag with him to put it in?’

  ‘The murderer might have fetched that already, so that he could convey the head away without getting blood on his clothes,’ said Blount. ‘It’d be natural for him to get rid of the body first, because it was the more difficult to conceal. He’d not dare leave it lying about in the dairy: but he could hide the head there temporarily without much danger.’

  ‘I’m afraid you’re right,’ said Nigel. ‘And, of course, if Finny saw the murder—’

  ‘Aye, the poor crazed loon maybe did well to run away.’

  ‘Not that he’d be much use as a witness. He is dumb, isn’t he?’

  ‘Yes, I’ve been into that. But he’s not a cretin. He could understand questions and he can write a bit.’ The Superintendent sighed heavily. ‘This is a most unsatisfactory case, though. Here’s a house, at the back end of nowhere. The old cook is hard of hearing; apparently she slept right through the thunderstorm that night. Finny Black is dumb. There’s a village girl who comes in to clean every day; but she noticed nothing wrong the next morning. Gates and I have been right through the village: but apart from the chap who saw Mr Seaton returning from his walk, not a soul has one single piece of evidence to contribute. The Press, as you know, has published a request for any one to come forward who was on or near the river that night, in the vicinity of the foot-bridge. Results entirely negative.’

  ‘It looks as if you’ll have to do all your own work for once, instead of getting the great British public to do it for you.’

  Blount brushed this aside with a curt gesture. ‘And the whole thing is cold, anyway. The body was not discovered till three days after the murder, and it wasn’t till we found the head this morning, a week after that, that we could begin to pin the thing down to Plash Meadow.’

  ‘Too bad. What are your plans?’

  The Superintendent outlined them. The investigation would now become a three-pronged one. With the aid of old photographs borrowed from Robert Seaton, and photographs of the severed head, it was hoped that a composite picture could be produced to give a fair likeness of Oswald Seaton. This picture would be reproduced in the Press, carrying the usual appeal for anyone who had seen this man recently to come forward. Provided with copies of it, Inspector Gates would try to trace the traveller’s journey down to Ferry Lacey. Copies would go to airports and seaports; shipping companies and air lines would be asked for co-operation in tracing the original: and the Bristol police would be requested to inquire at all lodging-houses and hotels, since the scanty evidence still seemed to point at Bristol as the most likely link between Oswald Seaton’s sojourn abroad and his arrival at Ferry Lacey.

  Secondly (and here the Superintendent groaned) the whole business of Oswald Seaton’s ‘suicide’ would have to be reopened. Blount had already applied to his Assistant Commissioner for a Detective-Inspector of the C.I.D., a pertinacious subordinate of his, named Slingsby, to be detailed for this work. ‘If Slingsby can’t root it up, nobody can,’ he told Nigel. It was obviously essential to examine this ‘suicide’ again now, although at the time both the police and the Court of Probate had been satisfied; all the more so, if Nigel’s hypothesis was correct that it had been staged under pressure from one or more of the parties who had benefited by it.

  The third prong of the inquiry would, of course, be directed at Plash Meadow. Here, Blount was on much more difficult ground, at any rate until Finny Black was found. He had already interviewed every member of the two households. Mara Torrance, questioned again, had admitted she might have been wrong about the time when she’d seen Mr and Mrs Seaton cross the courtyard: she had not looked at her watch, it seemed, but had thought it was not long after she’d heard the church clock strike half-past twelve; but she agreed now that it might have been quarter to one which she’d heard striking.

  As for the others, their stories appeared to be unassailable. It could be argued that it was rather odd for the Seatons not to have seen or heard anything suspicious that night. They had been out of the house twice, they said: once to have a look at the mare, Kitty; then, about half an hour later, when they discovered that Finny Black was not in his bedroom, to look for him. Each time they agreed, they had passed near the dairy: but they had not gone inside even during their search for Finny. Still, there was no inherent contradiction in their story. Oswald Seaton might well have wished to avoid them; he might even, conceivably, have been dead before they came out of the house the first time; alternatively, he might not have been killed till after they had returned from their search for Finny: this search, they said, had occupied them five to ten minutes—they’d broken it off when the second and heavier thunder-shower came down. The dairy was normally locked up by the dairyman, after the evening milking: this man believed he had locked it on the fatal night, but could not absolutely swear to this. The front door of Plash Meadow was also locked, but on that particular night Robert Seaton had not, to the best of his recollection, locked the door leading to the courtyard at the back, either on returning from his walk or when he and Janet had come in after looking for Finny.

  ‘There’s one last thing I’d like to know,’ said Nigel at this point of the Superintendent’s résumé. ‘Why did Janet Seaton start worrying about her mare during the first thunderstorm, but not about Finny Black till the second one began?’

  ‘It had occurred to me too,’ said Blount dryly. ‘But she explained it quite reasonably. She says that, when the first thunderstorm began, she went along to Finny’s bedroom to see if he was all right. She found him asleep. That was soon after midnight. She decided to sit up then till her husband came back from his walk: she expected him back sooner, she says. When he did return, he told her he’d heard the mare kicking about uneasily in its loose-box. So she went out with him to soothe the animal down. By this time, both of them felt wakeful, so they decided not to go to bed till the storm was over. They sat up in Mrs Seaton’s boudoir, reading. After about half an hour, they decided they would go to bed. Just then the second thunderstorm broke, so Mrs Seaton thought she’d just have another look at Finny first. This time, he wasn’t in his room. So they went out and hunted for him. When they returned, unsuccessful, they did go to bed at last—they have separate rooms, as you know—and fell asleep quickly, both of them.’

  ‘They’re a very protective family,’ remarked Nigel as he rose to go. Blount had offered to drive him back, but Nigel preferred to clear his head by a walk through the night air.

  ‘The question is, whom are they protecting?’ said Blount.<
br />
  ‘Oh, every one is protecting every one else. Robert Seaton gets it all round: he’s the most precious object in the whole collection. Lionel is madly protective towards Vanessa. Finny Black’s aberrations call forth extreme solicitude on the part of Robert and Janet. Then there’s Mara Torrance—Robert treats her as if she were his own daughter; Lionel is far from indifferent to her, in his quiet way; Janet tolerates her, which is saying a good deal: they’ve all woven a web of silence round young Mara. No, Blount—the question is not whom are they protecting, but from what. We mustn’t be misled into thinking that they’re all in a conspiracy to cherish a murderer. They may be. But I fancy we shall have to get through several protective layers, which may have little relevance to this crime, before we come to him.’

  And I myself, thought Nigel, walking briskly back to Ferry Lacey, have enlisted in the bodyguard. His own status at Plash Meadow, after the ‘discovery of the head, might have seemed highly questionable. He had, after all, been spying on Janet Seaton the previous night. And indeed it was part of the gathering mystery that a character so fierce and autocratic as Janet should have accepted his share in the night’s work without protest or apparent rancour: apart, of course, from virtually setting Finny at his throat; but that might have been no more than the reflex action of a suddenly startled woman. At any rate, Nigel had restored himself to her good graces this afternoon by dealing with the swarm of reporters who had descended again upon Plash Meadow as promptly as if the fall of Oswald Seaton’s head had been audible for fifty miles around the chestnut tree.

  So here I am, reflected Nigel, at once a member of the bodyguard and a nigger in the woodpile. Though God knows what the nigger is supposed to be doing in the woodpile. Do I want to discover the murderer? From all one knows of Oswald Seaton, his taking-off was a consummation devoutly to be wished. What I really want is that Robert Seaton should be allowed to write his poetry. In fact, I’m already sucked in to the general conspiracy to cherish and protect his genius. Well, why not?