George turned up the collar of his coat and made a dash for it through what had now become a downpour, across the road and into the vicarage drive. In the gateway he collided with a young man who had just descended from the Comerbourne bus and made for the same haven. They steadied each other solicitously with hasty apologies, and recognition was instant and mutual.
“I was just coming to see you, Mr. Felse,” said Dave Cressett, hugging The Midland Scene under his jacket from the driving rain, “I’ve got something here Mrs. Bracewell asked me to bring to you. And something besides to tell you.”
“Always the door,” said Sergeant Moon, late that Friday evening, after they had abandoned the mounds of official reports and statements, and were sitting back relaxed and tired over cigarettes and beer, thoughtfully brought in from the “Duck” by young Brian Jennings. “I’d be ready to bet my job that we were right, it’s the door, not the man. He just blundered into something he didn’t realise was dangerous— apparently merely by having this feeling that there was something odd about this door he’d once photographed for this magazine article. Now you tell me what dangerous secret there can be about an oak door? Worth killing for?”
“And before he’d even run to earth whatever it was he was after,” George pointed out. “A very dangerous secret indeed—show a little too much interest in it, and that’s enough, you’re knocked off just in case. Yet there was plenty of interest being shown in it—by all kinds of people. It was ceremonially on show. So what was so different about this man Bracewell’s interest, to mark him out as the chance that couldn’t be taken?”
“He was there prowling around it at night,” said Moon, “and alone. A crowd with a battery of cameras was O.K. One man with a torch sneaking back by himself wasn’t.”
“There was one more thing about him that was different, Jack. He’d seen it before.”
Moon considered that carefully. For centuries the door had hung in the cellars of the Abbey. The house had never been shown; and it was improbable that there had ever been more than one such article about it as the one in The Midland Scene. It wasn’t important enough or beautiful enough; it played too insignificant a part in history. The wonder was that it had achieved a place even once in such a series. That made Bracewell, in all probability, the only person present at the re-dedication, apart, of course, from the family, who had ever seen the door in its previous position.
“But even so, what could there have been about it to make him think he might get a scoop out of it? Something he hadn’t noticed until the thing was cleaned up? But then it would be there for everyone to notice. Whatever was queer about it meant nothing to anyone but him.”
“And what discoveries can you make about a door, for God’s sake? There it is, a solid block of wood with a lump of iron attached, everything about it visible at a glance.” George stretched and yawned. “Well, I’ll see this Miss Trent tomorrow, and have another word with Mrs. Bracewell. Who knows, I may hit on the right question by sheer luck, and stir a recollection, or she may have thought of something on her own. We’ve no choice about pulling out all the stops now, Jack. It took some hard work to get the Old Man to leave it with us, we’ve got to justify it now or die trying.”
“Well, at least we found the camera. Not that I expect the lab boys will get anything off it.” And of course it had been empty, the film extracted, and no doubt burned long before this. “There’s just a chance he’d have to take off his gloves to open and close the camera properly, but I’m not betting on it. It’s a smooth one to handle. And me with five chaps combing the place for it,” said Sergeant Moon sadly, “and it had to be young Brian who found it!”
The camera had been half-buried in the debris of dead flowers where old wreaths were dumped, in the most deserted corner of the graveyard. If Brian had not been tidying up the dump that morning, and happened to kick against metal, it might have taken them at least another day to work their way to it.
“It’s true, is it,” George asked, “that Robert Macsen-Martel—the late Robert, that is—left a trail of bastards all round these parts? Brian,” he explained wryly, “chose to account for himself. Quite frankly. According to him there are plenty more.”
“True enough. But the Jennings family, now, they’re a special case. Those three get on so well together, you wouldn’t believe. That’s what I call coming to terms with reality. You haven’t seen the mother, have you? She’s only thirty-nine now, and still as pretty as new paint. Linda Price, she was, went as maid to the Abbey—her old man must have been daft to let her. Nineteen, and a stunner, she was then. Exactly what you’d expect happened. Old Jennings, he’s twenty years older than her, he was a widower, and he had a soft spot for Linda. A sort of honourable bargain it was, and they’ve both kept it. He married her, and took on her boy—and gladly, I may say, his first wife never had any, and Linda’s never had any since, so it looks as if but for her slip-up he hadn’t a chance of getting a son. She’s never looked at anyone but old Eb since, she thinks the sun shines out of his high forehead. They got off lucky, all of ’em, they know how to value one another, even if they are a rum bunch. There’s many a family round here started off with a romantic love affair, and ended up with squabbling parents and problem children, and here’s the Jennings lot starting off with a business arrangement and ending as snug as old lovers, with an only child who hasn’t got so much as a complex or an inhibition to his name. Others,” said the sergeant sombrely, “weren’t so clever. There’s fathers round this valley that know their kids aren’t theirs, and make them pay for it, and what’s more, get it back off the kids with interest. And there’s others that don’t even know, and might very well do murder if they ever found out.”
“Not, however, this murder,” sighed George. “Plenty of reason for nursing grudges against the Martel clan, but what had this poor devil done?” He pondered for a moment, and human curiosity got the better of him. “Any special cases in mind? Locally?”
Sergeant Moon turned towards the window. Faintly through the wet trees beamed the distant lights of “The Duck”, and a mere murmur of music drifted in from the jukebox in the garden bar.
“Some time,” he said, “when you’re at leisure, go and take a good close look at Nobbie Crouch.”
“They’re taking the copper off guard tonight,” Saul Trimble said, flicking a beer-mat accurately in front of Joe Lyon and dumping a levelled-off pint of homebrewed on it without spilling a drop. He deposited his own pot carefully, for the corner table tended to rock slightly, but he knew his territory so well that it was no hazard to him. “Got to give the lads a few hours off in the end, and nothing’s happened so far, has it? I reckon even the spooks are bound to have a bit o’ respect for the English week-end. Back on duty a’ Monday.” He had an uncanny instinct for choosing the role that would most surely provoke whatever strangers he had hooked for the bar’s entertainment. Everyone had taken it for granted that the earnest researchers who had taken rooms at the hotel would carry their inquiries, after opening time, into the bar of “The Sitting Duck.” The natives did not use “The Martel Arms.” The reason was beer rather than caste, but the aliens were not to know that. They came slumming, and it was a wonder they didn’t bring their tape recorders with them, so quaint and primitive was Sam Crouch’s antiquated—and profitable—bar, and so renowned its characters. The visitors being believers, Saul had become a sceptic of the bleakest kind. He believed in nothing he could not touch, smell or drink. He deposited his lean rump in the red pulpit-cushions of the corner settle, and winked at Dinah Cressett across the crowded bar.