Into the Valley of Death (15 page)

Miss Unwin, thrusting the sight of the body firmly from her mind, went up to the dead man’s mother.

“Mrs. Burch?”

The old woman made no attempt to answer or even look up. Her insistent moaning went on as before.

“Mrs. Burch, this must have been terrible for you,” Miss Unwin said. “Terrible.”

Still the quiet moaning went on.

Miss Unwin slid down to sit on the stair beside the old woman. She put her arm round her shoulders.

“Look,” she said, “let me take you somewhere where you’ll be more comfortable.”

She got no response.

“Let me take you into the bedroom there,” she said, indicating the other room on the ground floor. “You’ll be better lying down.”

But now the old woman did break off for a moment in her keening grief.

“No,” she said in a sudden shout. “Not there. Not allowed. No.”

Miss Unwin did not attempt to find out why Arthur Burch’s mother apparently was not permitted in that room.

“Well, let me help you upstairs,” she said again. “You will be better lying down. Really, you will. And I will try to make you some tea.”

Gently, she attempted to raise the old woman. Her body, light as a bird’s, came up in Miss Unwin’s grasp. Almost carrying her, she got up the stairs step by step. At the top she
remembered the outline of the now-dead farmer she had seen the night before against the wavering candlelight and steered her burden into the room on the other side. She picked the old woman up bodily and put her on the low, unmade bed.

Not for a moment since her outburst at the suggestion of going into the downstairs bedroom had the old woman ceased her moaning, quiet and nerve-grating.

Miss Unwin looked down at her with compassion.

“Now I will see if I can make tea,” she said.

The old woman made no reply, directly. But she did raise herself a little on the bed.

“No,” she moaned. “No, no, no.”

“You don’t want tea? It will do you good.”

“Stay.”

It had been hard to make out what the word was, but Miss Unwin thought she had been begged not to go.

“Of course I’ll stay,” she said. “I’ll stay as long as you want. But I could go and make some tea and be back in a few minutes. You ought to take something. You’ve had no breakfast. I noticed the table laid for it as I went past.”

“Shutter,” the old woman said, pronouncing the word with sudden blurred force. “Shutter. Shutter.”

“The light is hurting your eyes? I’ll close the shutters certainly.”

Miss Unwin moved over to the single square window.

“Oh, but there are no shutters,’’ she said. “And no curtains either, I’m afraid.”

“Shutter. Shutter.” Miss Unwin looked round the small room in desperation. At last she saw a tattered red cloth on the chest of drawers.

“Look,” she said, “perhaps I can put this up against the window, if the light really does hurt you.”

“Shutter, shutter, shutter.”

“Yes, yes. I’m doing the best I can.”

With difficulty Miss Unwin pushed open the casement,
draped the red cloth over its two halves, and banged them sharply back into place. Her rough effort appeared to have done the trick. The shabby cloth was blotting out most of the light.

“There,” she said, “is that better?”

But the old woman had turned her face away and had begun to moan again, though more quietly than before.

“I’ll fetch some tea,” Miss Unwin said.

She went down to the kitchen. Either the doctor or the inspector had found a tablecloth and spread it over Arthur Burch’s body. Together with Mr. Heavitree, they were standing near it, talking gravely.

“I think I ought to tell you,” Mr. Heavitree was saying, “it’s my belief he had good reason.”

Miss Unwin had not intended to do more than see if the fire was alight in the kitchen range and find a kettle to make tea. But at Mr. Heavitree’s words she turned to the solemn little group.

“You’re suggesting Mr. Burch killed himself?” she said.

Inspector Whatmough frowned at her. “I don’t know who you are, young woman,” he said. “But it is at least clear that that is precisely what has happened.”

“No,” said Miss Unwin. “It is not what has happened. Arthur Burch has been murdered.”

All three of the men standing near the sprawled body of Arthur Burch turned towards Miss Unwin. Dr. Podgers, his tall hat in his hand with his stethoscope returned to its customary place inside it, looked merely puzzled. Inspector Whatmough, thin and grizzled, looked fiercely angry. Even Mr. Heavitree, the most experienced in murder of the three and Miss Unwin’s champion, wore an expression of sad disappointment.

But before Miss Unwin could offer any explanation of her claim that, despite the shotgun loosely held in Farmer Burch’s hand, he had not killed himself, the sound of a horse’s galloping hooves was heard from outside.

Inspector Whatmough went across to the low window, stooped, and peered out.

“Yes,” he said, “I thought as much. It’s my Chief Constable.”

Major Charteris, Miss Unwin thought. Major Charteris, the Tartar.

The galloping hooves came to a halt. “Here, you, catch the reins,” they heard the Major shout to Constable Grigson in the garden. Then the man himself was standing at the kitchen door.

Miss Unwin saw that he was a decidedly formidable figure. Though perhaps in his late fifties, he still retained all the fiercely upright carriage of the soldier. This air of military aggressiveness was reinforced by a mottled, outdoor complexion and a strong, if greying, pair of moustaches like the horns of a head-lowered bull.

“Right,” he snapped, his voice echoing into the low-ceilinged room with parade-ground force, “what is all this I hear, Whatmough? Burch committed suicide? Always thought the fellow was peculiar. My tenant, you know. Came to me with the estate.”

Inspector Whatmough drew himself up to attention. “Yes, sir,” he said. “Suicide. A clear case, thank goodness. His own shotgun, still in his hand.”

“Good. Good. Thought I’d better look in. Death occurring on my own land and all that. But you’ll deal with everything, Whatmough. Make sure the coroner has all the particulars exactly. No damned slipshod work, d’you hear?”

“Yes, sir. You can rely on me.”

Major Charteris, slapping his booted leg with the riding whip he carried, turned to go.

“One moment, if you please,” said Miss Unwin.

Major Charteris wheeled round. “You spoke to me, madam? I am not at all clear just what you are doing here? Death chamber and all that.”

“I am here because I had some questions I wished to put to Mr. Burch,” Miss Unwin said, loudly and clearly. “But I find he was murdered before I had a chance to speak to him.”

“Murdered?” Major Charteris exploded.

“I was about to tell the young woman that she was talking nonsense, sir,” Inspector Whatmough put in hastily.

“Quite right.”

Again the Chief Constable turned to go.

But now Mr. Heavitree spoke up.

“Excuse me, sir,” he said. “Perhaps you’ll remember me. Heavitree, former Superintendent at Scotland Yard.”

Major Charteris gave him a quick look. It did not appear to acknowledge their acquaintanceship as being very valuable to him.

“I think, sir,” Mr. Heavitree said, undeterred, “that it might be worth your while at least to listen to what Miss
Unwin here has to say. She’s a remarkably intelligent person, sir, you may take my word for it.”

“Intelligent? I dare say. But she is a woman, damn it.”

“Yes, sir,” Mr. Heavitree said. “And I will admit I don’t see myself why this death is anything other than what it appears to be. But nevertheless I would respectfully advise you, sir, to hear Miss Unwin out.”

“You would, would you? All right, then, madam. You have two minutes.”

Miss Unwin drew herself up. “I shall not need two minutes,” she said. “All I would ask you to do is to direct your attention to the table here.”

The Chief Constable shot a glance from under formidable eyebrows at the simple kitchen table.

“Well? A perfectly ordinary table, for a cottage. None too clean, I see, but Burch always was … Still, mustn’t speak ill of the dead, I suppose.”

“A perfectly ordinary table, yes,” said Miss Unwin. “Laid for breakfast last night in quite the ordinary way. There is the teapot in front of old Mrs. Burch’s place, and there opposite her is her son’s place. With the knife on its left-hand side.”

“And what of that?” Major Charteris barked.

But Mr. Heavitree was ahead of him.

“Knife on the left, sir,” he said. “A left-handed man. But that gun is in the fellow’s right hand. Miss Unwin’s correct, sir. She’s correct, after all. This is murder. Murder disguised as suicide.”

The Chief Constable stood there silent. His mouth under his ferocious moustache was turned grimly down.

At last he turned to Inspector Whatmough. “Well, Inspector?”

The Inspector sighed. “I think there may be something in what Mr. Heavitree says, sir,” he replied.

“Something in what Miss Unwin has said,” Mr. Heavitree corrected him.

“Yes, I dare say,” Major Charteris grunted. “I dare say.”

Again he turned to Inspector Whatmough. “Well, man, if you’ve got a murder inquiry on your hands, you’d better not be standing there gawping. Get on with it, get on with it. I shall be back home for luncheon. Come over then and have something to report.”

He swung away and marched out. They heard him bark something at Constable Grigson and then the brisk clop of hooves.

Inspector Whatmough turned to Mr. Heavitree. “Something to report,” he said bitterly. “By one o’clock, if you please. Why, since that man came here it’s been nothing but shouted orders and parades and marching. He may be the hero of the Alma and all that, but I can’t see Army ways being much help with police work.”

Then he, too, strode out and could be heard a moment later taking the unfortunate Grigson to task.

Mr. Heavitree looked at Miss Unwin. “Well,” he said, “we were too late, were we not? Whoever it was that killed Alfie Goode, and persuaded poor Burch to tell his lies in court, got here before us.”

Miss Unwin sighed. “Yes, that’s true enough. But it does tell us one thing.”

“That we’re on the right road?”

“No,” Miss Unwin said, “something more than that. It tells us that whoever we’re looking for is very much in this particular part of the world. He’s been able to keep a close watch over whatever we’ve been doing.”

“Yes. Yes, you’re right. And I must say I don’t much like it.”

“But I do like it,” Miss Unwin retorted. “The nearer he is to us, that man, the nearer we are to him. And we have only tomorrow left in which to lay him by the heels.”

“Yes, I take your point, my dear. And I’ll tell you one piece of good news in exchange.”

“Good news? After this?” Miss Unwin looked across to the body hidden under the tablecloth.

“Well, better news than it might be. The Chief Constable,
when we go to him with a name—if ever we get that name— he won’t be half as difficult to handle now after what you’ve just demonstrated to him.”

“Well,” Miss Unwin answered, “we must hope not. But, good gracious, I’m forgetting all about that poor woman upstairs. I came down to make her some tea.”

She turned and bustled about, looking for kettle and tea-caddy.

It did not take her long to make the tea, and she hurried upstairs with a cup. Mrs. Burch was lying in almost the same position as she had left her on the unmade bed. But, though she still gave out a groan from time to time, the continuous moaning had ceased.

“Let me help you to sit,” Miss Unwin said.

She heaved the frail old woman higher in the bed and offered her the tea. Tremblingly she took the cup, but in trying to lift it to her lips she began spilling it.

Miss Unwin took the cup from her.

“I had better mop that mess up,” she said.

She peered at Mrs. Burch, trying to see in the half darkness in which the red cloth over the window had left the room how much tea had been spilt.

“Would you mind now if I gave us a little more light?” she asked.

The old woman looked over at the window.

“What did you put that there for?” she demanded with sudden querulousness. “My best cloth.”

Miss Unwin privately thought that if the tattered cloth she had taken from the top of the chest of drawers was Mrs. Burch’s best, her others must be little more than rags. But she kept silent.

She went over to the window, carefully removed her improvised curtain, and restored it to its place.

“I thought you had asked me to close the shutters,” she said, by way of keeping Mrs. Burch’s thought away from her loss.

The old woman gave a shrieking gasp.

Miss Unwin turned and hurried across to the bed.

“What is it? Whatever is it?”

Frightened eyes stared up at her.

“Please, Mrs. Burch, you’re in trouble. Tell me what it is. Perhaps I can help.”

“He’ll come,” the old woman whispered. “He’ll come.”

“Who will come, Mrs. Burch? You can tell me.”

“He killed my Arthur. He’ll kill me, too.”

Miss Unwin’s pulses raced. Was she going to hear after all from this trembling old woman the name Arthur Burch had been killed to prevent her learning?

“Yes, Mrs. Burch, yes?” she said. “Tell me who it was. Then the police can come and arrest him, and you’ll be safe.”

“Police? No, no.”

“Yes, Mrs. Burch. Yes. Perhaps your son did something the police would not approve of, but they approve of murder much less. Tell me who it was who killed him. Just tell me, and soon all this will be over.”

The old woman looked up at her with blinking, frightened eyes. Miss Unwin smelt suddenly the sour odour of the bedclothes under her.

“Mrs. Burch,” she said, “you must tell me that name. Justice demands it.”

“Justice?”

“Yes. The man who murdered your son, he can be brought to justice. Who was it, Mrs. Burch?”

Again silence and the blinking of scared old eyes. And then a whisper. Faint as a dying puff of breeze.

“Sutter.”

For a moment Miss Unwin thought the half-crazed old woman had reverted to her mania about the light and was wanting the nonexistent shutters on the window closed again. But then a different thought came to her. Perhaps the old woman had not been as incoherent as she had assumed. Perhaps she had really meant to say “Sutter.”