Death at Hallows End (24 page)

“I do not think Cyril Neast heard his uncle's telephone conversation with Humby on the Sunday morning. I think Grossiter may have told the Neasts to expect nothing from him, but not that his solicitor was due on Monday to implement this. I think they may have discussed the possibility of murdering him, and were fairly sure that Darkin, for a share of the spoils, would join them. The Neasts regarded the making of any will by Gros-siter as assuring their own disinheritance, for they believed Gros-siter to be intestate and that they were his only heirs. None of them knew of the previous will: the old man had always sworn he would die intestate so that his son would inherit, and he had
given Humby such injunctions about the secrecy of that will that Humby had not even told his partner, and kept the will in his private safe.

“If they had known that Humby was coming that day, I don't think they would have calmly gone to market. I think they would have planned some clumsy way to prevent the will being signed. But I may be wrong about this. It is one of those questions that can only be answered by the Neasts themselves. It's not very important, perhaps, but it's annoying to find no strong evidence to support one view or the other. It will not materially affect events if we assume that Grossiter's telephone call to Humby on that Sunday morning was not overheard and that as the Neasts drove home from market they had no knowledge of the solicitor's promised visit.

“Then Holroyd was given, and seized, his opportunity. As they drove up Church Lane towards their home at about five o'clock that Monday afternoon, they found a car blocking their way. They got out and found Humby dead at the wheel. Holroyd's knowledge of medicine enabled him to diagnose the cause of death—a heart attack. What could be more convenient? What could be handier than the corpse of a man of their uncle's age, a man
who had died naturally?
Dr. Jayboard had never set eyes on their uncle. All they had to do was to call Jayboard to examine this corpse as that of their uncle and they would have an impeccable death certificate with which to cremate Grossiter when they had murdered him. They put Humby's body in the back of their lorry, drove or pushed his car to the side of the road in order to pass, and drove on the farm.

“Our only outside information of what happened that evening comes from Humphrey Spaull. He saw that Holroyd was driving the lorry and stopped outside the Neasts' bungalow only long enough to get out and hand the wheel to Cyril. Cyril then locked the lorry away in a barn among the farm
buildings, the body of Humby remaining in it till after dark, presumably.

“I find it interesting to speculate about what went on in that dreadful little bungalow between those three most unattractive men. It cannot be more than speculation at present, though, as I say, I think we shall have very complete information in time. Let us suppose that the brothers took Darkin into their confidence, and that Darkin, who had realised from what Grossiter said to Spaull that he would get nothing for his seventeen years of faithful service from Grossiter's estate, agreed to join the conspiracy, the Neasts promising a certain proportion of the money when they inherited it, as no one doubted they would. Incidentally, a small question arises here to which we may never know the answer. What had happened between Grossiter and Darkin since the making of that other will by which Darkin benefitted so disproportionately? Perhaps Mrs. Cupper may be able to tell anyone curious enough to enquire.

“Till now, according to our supposition, they did not know who Humby was. He was just a dead man of Grossiter's age. Plenty of people, Puckett told me, drove up Church Lane to see that particularly fine church and the Neasts supposed this was a chance visitor. At what point did they become aware that it was Grossiter's solicitor and that he was actually carrying the will? Darkin knew Humby by sight, so if he went over to the lorry he could have told the others what they had to deal with. It must have been a considerable shock to them. A man, any man, disappearing from near their house might not draw attention to them unduly. That was a risk Holroyd had calculated and was prepared to take. But the disappearance of their uncle's solicitor, as he brought a will to their uncle that disinherited them, would certainly raise a hue and cry and involve them hopelessly in suspicion. For this reason, I think it was not until after Grossiter had been murdered that Darkin discovered and
revealed Humby's identity, and then it was too late to turn back. The wonderful opportunity seen by Holroyd had turned into a very risky business indeed, from which there was no retreat.

“They might, of course, have driven Humby's car to some place as far as possible from their home. But they probably calculated that Stonegate must have seen it, and the man in it, on his way home, and thought that others, the Rector perhaps or Mrs. Rudd, may have noticed it. Besides, if one of them was seen driving it or leaving it, or driving away from it in their lorry, it would involve them more absolutely than the finding of it in Church Lane would do. They preferred—wisely perhaps—to face what could only be suspicion rather than risk some unanswerable proof of their involvement. Their whole attitude argues this. When I interviewed them, I realised that all three knew they were under the gravest suspicion and had prepared their answers to almost every possible question.

“How was Grossiter murdered? This again we shall know in time, but for the moment let us assume that it was through Holroyd's knowledge of medicine that he could be killed without scars or distorted features, or any of the results of violence. He was probably poisoned.

“They brought Humby's body over from the farm building in the lorry to avoid carrying it through the lane, probably. We know this because Spaull was wakened by the lorry's lights as it was returned to its place.

“Then came the tricky business of putting Humby's body into Grossiter's bed and pyjamas and giving it the peaceful look of one who had died in his sleep. It took some nerve to wait till five-thirty in the morning before calling Dr. Jayboard, but this was necessary because of
time.
Humby had died somewhere about four p.m. or a little earlier, and Jayboard was told that the man he examined had died during the night, at the earliest ten p.m. But they calculated correctly that by letting sufficient
time pass before Jayboard's examination, they could blur the issue of the exact time of death.

“Where did they put the body of Grossiter while the body of Humby was being examined? This involves some macabre possibilities. Perhaps the neighbouring bedroom was cleared and the two corpses lay in beds in two adjoining rooms. At all events, Jayboard examined Humby's body, believing it to be Grossiter's, and gave his certificate with no doubt in his mind. If you think Jayboard was careless in this, ask yourselves what doctor, called to the bedside of his neighbours' uncle whom he knows to be an elderly man staying with them, would for a moment suppose that the corpse he examined was not the right one. If someone rang you at five o'clock in the morning and said he thought his uncle was dead and would you as a doctor come and see, and if the caller, a respectable inhabitant of your village, took you into a room and showed you the body of an old gentleman who had died naturally of a heart attack, would you at once ask if this
was
the body of his uncle? Of course you wouldn't, and Holroyd knew this. That part of his plan worked splendidly.

“But they were kept busy by those two corpses. They guessed that Spaull might want to see that of Grossiter, whom he knew, and that Grossiter's must be prepared by the undertaker. So Grossiter's body occupied the room in which Grossiter had slept. But they must have been rather baffled when Dr. Jayboard called again later on Tuesday to make a further examination. He told me, ‘Holroyd Neast was just sitting down to his tea and asked me to join him … A few minutes later his brother and the man Darkin came in and … joined us at table.' That is, after they had had time to switch back the corpses.

“It was Grossiter's body that was cremated, the body that would have been found to contain traces of poison if it had been examined, not the body of the man who had died naturally.
And with its cremation was destroyed the only absolute and final proof of the guilt of Holroyd and the other two. But there remained Humby's body which had so admirably served its turn but must now be got rid of.

“It may be that Holroyd had provided for this from the first, for he was quite capable of such detailed planning. The idea was another of his uses of opportunity. Rudd had recently been buried in the churchyard and his freshly dug grave could be dug again to make room for another body above his coffin. This would leave no traces of excavation that might show anywhere else.

“Perhaps Holroyd guessed that the police would search his house and farm. He lost no time in putting his plan into execution. On the night of Wednesday, that is two days before Grossiter's cremation, two of them, or perhaps all three, dug down as far as Rudd's coffin, then threw the body of Humby in and replaced the soil. They were just finishing when Mrs. Rudd, guided by her ‘instink', looked out and saw their lantern. ‘They must have heard me opening the window because I could hear them shovelling back the earth as fast as they could,' she told me. She shouted at them and ‘saw the light moving away in a hurry.' So much in a hurry that they did not replace the flowers properly and sent Darkin across in the morning to arrange them, as Mrs. Rudd also saw and reported.

“The three men were now sitting pretty. They had disposed of both bodies; the one containing proof against them was destroyed finally, the other as they thought buried quite securely. They could afford to answer everybody's questions most obligingly and to receive me with the most complete explanations of everything.

“But I'm always impressed by anything out of character and when I heard that the mean and avaricious Holroyd Neast was paying for a heavy slab gravestone to cover Rudd's grave, it aroused my curiosity. I decided to show this to Holroyd. Immediately
after speaking of his generosity in providing a monument for Rudd, I asked him if he was superstitious. This was quite enough for Holroyd. He jumped to the conclusion that I knew the secret of Rudd's grave and decided on instant action to recover the corpse and conceal it elsewhere.

“Of that action we have no direct evidence because Spaull here was skilfully bludgeoned from behind when he was going to investigate. This time they worked in darkness while one of them remained on guard, for they had had their warning on Wednesday when Mrs. Rudd saw their light. It was decided that it would be too risky for the Neasts to use their own car for this and Cyril was sent on foot to bring Hickmansworths', for they knew from their previous acquaintance with this family about their habit of leaving their car down at the farm, a good distance from the house. Puckett saw Cyril Neast ‘hurrying up the lane on foot' that Saturday evening and thought he was merely going to get drunk. He heard him return in the car that he knew was not the Neasts' and, an hour after that, drive away again, having loaded Humby's body, presumably.

“When I heard of that second scene in the churchyard, I did not know what Mrs. Rudd had seen three nights earlier. I thought Spaull had been on his way to interrupt not a disinterment but a burial. I immediately persuaded Snow to get an exhumation order, decided to watch the churchyard myself until the exhumation was made. But during the night, Mrs. Rudd told me of Wednesday night and I realised that poor Humby's body had been buried then and had now been taken away and was lost to us again.

“It was, as far as I knew for certain then, the body of a murdered man, and I saw only one hope of nailing the murderer …”

“And here,” said Mr, Gorringer, acting his traditional part, “let us pause a moment and give Deene a chance to refresh himself. This must be an exhausting exposition.”

Carolus's listeners broke into conversation, but he did not join them. He looked tired and ill. He had never worked with more intensity on a case or been so heartily disgusted with the story he unearthed. So while Mr. Gorringer bumbled portentously and Mrs. Gorringer looked for a chance to insert a witticism, Carolus silently looked over his notes.

“I'm afraid,” he said when he was ready to go on, “that I am giving you a somewhat lifeless account of this crime. The truth is, it has rather got me down. I have been working against time, chiefly in order to save the life of our only remaining witness, but also to get the thing cleared before it was time to open shop. I mean the beginning of term.”

“Ah, Deene,” said Mr. Gorringer, “who would not forgive your facetiousness at such a time, even though it might be thought to reflect on the school? But proceed, my dear fellow, we are all agog.”

“If not a-magog,” added his wife.

“There was only one chance of obtaining a conviction. The three men could scarcely all be involved in the same degree, and I hoped to frighten one of them into giving Queen's Evidence. I picked on Darkin as being the likeliest and either put the idea into his head or cultivated an idea he already had. I told him of the will which Thripp had discovered by which he would benefit so lavishly and this helped to convince him that if he was to enjoy that money he must act at once. But my interview with Darkin in the so-called Snuggery of the Falstaff had aroused the Neasts' suspicions—they had followed him up to the pub and thereafter must have watched him closely, for this time a telephone conversation
was
overheard. When Darkin phoned Stuffart to make an appointment for next day, his first step to giving Queen's Evidence, one of the Neasts overheard every word and this was Darkin's death warrant.

“He was probably killed by Thelodocticylin, the poison already used for Grossiter. Then, with the remains of a tube of Somnifax, containing Thelodocticylin, in his pocket, taken out to the meadow adjoining Hickmansworths' land, where the simplest and most convincing kind of suicide was imitated with the gun that, Holroyd states, Darkin had often borrowed from him. This one, at least, would never give Queen's Evidence.